Sam Mitchell has faith that his side is better prepared for a Semi Final at Adelaide Oval, as his side looks towards a clash with the Crows on Friday night.
Addressing the media on Wednesday morning, Mitchell spoke on the growth they’ve had in the last 12 months and how they’ll look to harness the brown and gold’s support at Adelaide Oval.
On returning to Adelaide Oval for a Semi Final
“It’s a good question. Last year was a bit of an unknown and there’s still an unknown, it’s obviously a different game and a different club, playing against someone new. We made our own changes, we feel a little bit more prepared but that doesn’t make the outcome assured but we feel in a pretty good position, we feel we’ve improved in the last 12 months but so have Adelaide. They finished on top, won more games than anyone else and will rightly go into the game as favourite but we feel like we’ve got a game style that holds up at this time of year, we’ve been working on it a long time and can we produce our best when it matters? It’s what we’ve been working towards and that’s the great beauty of sport, we don’t know the answer just yet.”
On the recent meetings againt the Crows
“We’ve played two games against them both close, we’re one and one. We know we need to produce our best against the side that’s finished on top of the ladder and deserve what they have had so far. But they’re going to be smarting from a game they will have learnt a lot from, a lot of their players haven’t played a lot of finals footy but they’ve all got a bit more experience now so they’ll be better prepared this week, and we’ll go over to a hostile environment and put our best foot forward.”
On the Hawks fans in Adelaide
“It’s (a hostile environment) what we’re going to have isn’t it. And I think the Hawthorn fans, we’ve got a couple of buses that are going over and I didn’t realise how rowdy the Hawks fans were but last week up at Engie we had two bays of just huge amounts of Hawthorn people and they were the most rowdy ones in there. So I’m not sure you can drown out all of the Adelaide crowd, there’s probably going to be a few there that’ll be pretty loud, but it’s a fantastic stadium to play football in, and we’ll be well and truly outnumbered. But the Hawks fans that do make the trip, I’m enormously thankful to them and they’ll put on a good show for us and we’ll make sure we do the same on the other side of the fence.”
On collective efforts of squad
“We talk to the players on a fairly regular basis about on how it takes a squad. I’m sure every coach in the competition has said it takes squads, it’s not just the players who play, it’s everyone, it takes training standards, it takes your VFL team, it takes all of your staff and your coaches and your player who don’t play to create an environment that is going to be successful on the field for the AFL team. So last year we had Jai Serong who hadn’t played a lot of AFL footy through the year but he gets his opportunity in a final and that story has ring through the walls in here to say you never know when your opportunity is going to come, and no matter how much disappointment you have for selection on a weekly basis if you’re not in the team, you’re only one injury or one mishap away from being in the team. Someone will get an opportunity this week and being in an environment with great attitudes and great on-field performance from the Box Hill point of view, but also from a great cultural standpoint as far as energy and vibrancy in the group. It’s very unlikely that anyone goes in unchanged from now until the end of the season and we say that on a regular basis to our boys.”
Watch Mitchell’s full press conference below.
