Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell fronted the media ahead of his side’s clash with Fremantle on Saturday night.
He spoke on the upcoming match and imminent ruck battle between Lloyd Meek and Fremantle’s duo in Luke Jackson and Sean Darcy, Will Day’s progress from his foot injury and his thoughts on Wrexham, who visited the club earlier in the week.
We summarised the key points from Mitchell’s press conference below.
On facing Fremantle
“(Caleb) Serong has been a great player for a long time now and (Andy) Brayshaw’s probably hurt us a couple of times in the past, so balancing up those two match ups… But (Jordan) Clark I think has been in fantastic form, they did a really good job on him last week, Sydney. So looking at managing those things, balancing up, getting their key players out of the game but also playing our own way and making sure that we are playing a brand of footy that we think will be sustainable and get success this weekend but also ongoingly. So managing those things, hopefully we can quell their influence whilst still playing our own way.”
On Meek playing against Sean Darcy & Luke Jackson
“They’re formidable rucks and they’ve both got some potencies that are a bit different so I think normally when you play against a really dominant ruck, they have one set of skills and you prepare for that one thing. Whereas I think the thing with Freo is they’ve got the big brut in Sean, but then with Luke, they can go with athleticism and a bit of jump and a bit of follow-up. So Lloyd’s going to have his work cut out, ensuring he can manage both tasks.”
On Will Day’s progress
“Round 20 has been the vague target for quite a period of time now and nothing’s changed to my understanding. He’ll do a little bit of extra training today and he’s done a couple of drills over the last week or so. You get the feeling of ‘he looks ready, can he go soon?’ but he’s going through his process and our medical team, we’ve got enormous confidence in them and we can field a full 18 v 18 with a bench at the moment so you have to look at our medical team and say they’re doing a pretty good job. So full faith in them in getting him back and ready to perform, not just ready to play, I think that’s really important. So when he gets back he’ll be ready to perform.
“He’s a player that we obviously have enormous hopes for, not just for this season but for his whole career. So we’ll be looking at what is the best thing for Will Day and what is the best thing for us, and managing those things as best we can. I don’t think he’s going to play a lot of VFL footy if he ends up there.”
On Wrexham’s visit to the club
“I think Wrexham, it’s been an amazing story. I think everyone’s followed them with a great amount of interest in the first part about this celebrity owner but then they’re actually backing it up and gone from competition, to competition, to competition to be a worldwide figure in the way that they are. And the way that they go about it, I think when you look at the size of their organisation, it’s quite similar to ours, we can sometimes go over to the premier league and very hard to compare when their academies are four or five times bigger than our organisation. But Wrexham is a similar size business so there’s plenty of learning there and potentially some opportunities to do some PD at the end of the season and continue to learn from a professional organisation in a different code.”
Watch the full press conference below.
