LANCE Franklin's first kick at the MCG yesterday was a shot at goal that came off his shin and did not make the distance. It was an overture. Franklin would have 14 shots for the day, for four goals, seven behinds and three misses, and was probably the best player on the ground. Franklin's bad-hair days are as spectacular as his good, and better than most others' bests. Whether running amok or amiss, he is incomparable.

The game was played on Sydney's terms, but to Hawthorn's tune. It meant that there was much honest football, but few highlights. Five stood out. One was Adam Goodes' goal, bent around the post with the outside of his right foot while on the run. Another was a towering Michael O'Loughlin mark, taken at such stratospheric height that he knocked himself out upon landing. A third was a Campbell Brown mark in the last quarter, taken in his fingertips while running with the flight of the ball. It was patent courage.

The other two were Franklin goals. For the first, he gathered the ball in the forward pocket, feinted to avoid Lewis Roberts-Thomson, then side-stepped Leo Barry and dribbled the ball through. For the second, he led Roberts-Thomson to the ball, scooped it up and with the merest waggle of his hips wrong-footed the Swan, then doubled back and sprinted triumphantly to the goal line.

Sydney coach Paul Roos spared Roberts-Thomson then by moving him off Franklin, and his feelings later by saying it was because Hawthorn was leading him out of the play. At that moment, it is probable that Roberts-Thomson wished for nothing more than to be out of the play. Craig Bolton replaced him in the death seat.

The moral was simple. Sydney, without Barry Hall and the best of O'Loughlin, had to fight for every goal. Hawthorn always had the possibility of kicking one out of its proverbial. It was demonstrably the better side anyway, but with an X-factor, too. The merest movement of Franklin towards the ball would turn murmur into roar.

Franklin would and should have embarrassed Sydney yesterday, but kicked drunkenly. It is a problem that has dogged him since the start of his career, and perplexed Hawthorn. Goalkicking is different psychologically from field kicking, and perhaps cannot be taught. One week, Franklin took extra tuition from Hawthorn legend Jason Dunstall, the third highest goal-scorer in the game's history. The next week, he kicked 2.11.

He said yesterday he did not know from week to week how he would kick, and that each match day felt different. He said strings of misses did not play on his mind, but might if the Hawks lost repeatedly by small margins. Otherwise, he recited the modern anthem: must work harder, will work harder. "I've just got to keep working on my goalkicking, keep concentrating on it," he said.

Hawthorn coach Alistair Clarkson said if Franklin's kicking was a concern, it was one all clubs would love to have. "We're just pretty excited about what he might kick one day," Clarkson said. "He's getting eight to 10 shots at goal every week." Clarkson said the give in the sandy MCG surface was a mitigating factor yesterday. Many players missed apparently simple shots, and behinds far outnumbered goals.

Clarkson said many people had forwarded advice, about the speed and length of his run-up, for instance, but the club believed that what came naturally was best. "All he can do is keep working on it and hope that a bit of consistency will come," he said.

Clarkson implored Franklin watchers to remember that he is still only 21, still a work in progress. It is an intoxicating thought for Hawthorn fans, sobering for the rest of the competition. At least three times yesterday, for instance, Franklin got clean hands on the ball in a marking contest, but did not hold it, one of them while leaping acrobatically over Darren Jolly. "I've had to work on my marking from the day I came into the game," he said.

Franklin is also conspicuously a one-sided player. The most exotic in yesterday's collection of Franklin moments was a snap at goal with his right foot; it missed of course. Some footballers have long and fruitful careers without developing their non-dominant sides. Often, they are left-footers, who never lose the ability to wrong-foot opponents.

"In 15 years of league football, did anyone ever see James Hird kick left foot," Clarkson asked rhetorically. "Some freakishly talented players are able to find time and space on their natural side no matter what."

Match won, top-four place guaranteed, Sydney's stranglehold on the Hawks broken at last, Franklin joined the rest the team in delivering miniature footballs to fans on the fence. Franklin picked out one sitting between goal and behind post. Naturally.