Franklin returns to face Hawks in ANZAC Day clash

On ANZAC Day 2022, Lance Franklin returned from injury to face Hawthorn — the club that shaped him — in a Round 6 AFL clash carrying the quiet gravity of unfinished histories. His former teammate Sam Mitchell now stood in the Hawthorn coaching box, a detail that transformed a football match into something closer to a reunion of shared chapters. Sport has a way of arranging these confrontations, placing men in opposition to the very places and people that made them, and asking what remains.