Hawthorn has been dealt a double blow for Anzac Day after the AFL Match Review Officer suspended both James Sicily and Dylan Moore for striking Port Adelaide forward Logan Evans during the Hawks' narrow Round 6 win at the MCG.
The MRO cited both incidents as gut punches, an action the league has moved to clamp down on this season after a string of late-2025 episodes raised concerns about off-the-ball hits that often escape umpire detection in real time. Nine's match-review coverage confirmed both Sicily and Moore were graded careless with low impact to the body, but the gut-punch classification carries an automatic minimum sanction under the 2026 sanctions matrix.
Fox Sports labelled the rulings "petulance" from two senior Hawks, while coverage from Yahoo News and MSN pointed out that the club would now lose its captain and one of its most important small-forward pressure players for the Anzac Day showdown against Melbourne. Evans, who is in his first full season at Port, was not seriously injured but was visibly grimacing at multiple stoppages during the second half, and the vision — replayed on the league's weekly match review broadcast — left little doubt about intent.
For Hawthorn, the timing could not be worse. The Hawks have pushed themselves into early finals contention under Sam Mitchell, and they had been building toward Anzac Day as a marquee test of where the group stands against a premiership-fancied Demons outfit. The Sicily suspension in particular deprives the club of its defensive organiser, its chief intercept mark and the voice that drives the back six. Moore's loss hurts differently: he has been Hawthorn's most important ground-level forward for two seasons, and the Hawks have struggled to manufacture scoring pressure when he has been unavailable.
The double ban also raises further questions about the AFL's gut-punch crackdown, which has been applied inconsistently through the opening weeks of the season. Match-review defenders say the competition finally has a deterrent that players fear; critics argue that the carrying-card system has left too much guesswork for coaches trying to plan round-to-round rotations around possible suspensions.
For Hawthorn, however, there is no debate. The club's Anzac Day game plan will now need to be rebuilt inside 72 hours, with Mitchell facing one of his harder selection weeks of the season as he tries to paper over the loss of his two most influential players at either end of the ground.