Hawthorn Executive General Manager of Football Rob McCartney highlighted the club’s vision for “sustained success” as he spoke to AFL Trade Radio on Thursday morning. 

McCartney reiterated Sam Mitchell and Mark McKenzie’s sentiments, after they expressed the club’s desire to “get better” and build on its preliminary final berth in 2025. 

While the trade period always presents an opportunity to improve the club’s playing list, McCartney pointed to a key coaching recruit who he believes will help the brown and gold achieve its goal of sustained success for many years to come. 

Other topics covered included Hawthorn’s imminent move to the Kennedy Community Centre and the club’s search for a new VFL coach. 

We summarised the key points from McCartney’s interview with Josh Gabelich and Sarah Olle below. 

On the club’s move to the Kennedy Community Centre

“It is very close. It’s an amazing facility, and it’s pretty exciting to be moving after the year that we are having in AFLW, we’re seven and one, and we made the prelim final in the men’s program. Our footy is absolutely measuring up now, and now we’re going to move to a facility that’s going to give our players every chance to be their very best. I think the scale of the facility is the thing that catches us all when we walk inside. We’re looking to move within this week to Dingley. Obviously, our men’s program is on leave at the moment, but our AFLW program will spend a little bit longer here at Waverley, then they’ll make the transition in about a fortnight’s time.”

On Daniel Giansiracusa’s appointment

“The first thing I’ll say is that he’s an impressive human, let alone his skill level, knowledge and acumen around coaching. Once we got the opportunity to have a conversation, we were impressed straight away. The idea around the Head of Development, you know, a reflection for us when we look at our list now, and you talk about, say, Will Day, Dylan Moore, Jai Newcombe, Conor Nash, Ned Reeves and CJ (Changkuoth Jiath), the list sort of goes on. They’re really important players over the last few years, but if you go back to a significant starting point for them, it was when Sam Mitchell was the Head of Development. He was also coaching Box Hill at the time, but the work that Sam put into those players and then their ability to continually get better post that foundational work that Sam did was really significant. Strategically, we made the decision that we wanted to build the profile of that role again, and when the opportunity presented for us to sit in front of Daniel and sell that, he saw the excitement that we saw in that role and what we possibly could do with it. You have those groups of players now, like the Weddles, the Watsons, young Will McCabe was a first round pick, Calsher Dear’s another one in that group and we’ll continue to bring in young players who need development and you can then say, well, Mackenzie and Ward are in that group as well, so if Daniel can have a similar impact that Sam had with that group of players, it gives us the opportunity to look at sustained success for this football club and that’s what we’re all about.”

On the club’s search for a new VFL coach 

“We’re in the process right now. We’ve conducted some interviews, and we’re close to an appointment in that space. I’ve always enjoyed getting to a point in the year where you can look at your program and how you can improve it. We talked about how you can do that in your playing list, it’s no different in your workforce. You get the chance to look at what could make you better through personnel. We’ve had some interesting and exciting interviews in the past couple of days, and I’m really bullish about what we’re going to be able to bring into our football club for 2026 in that coaching space. It’ll also give us a chance to get better.”

On Will Day’s return to play

“He’s an exceptional player who feels the pain that our members and fans do in that he hasn’t been able to play as much footy as he would’ve liked. We’ve got a great medical and high-performance team, and a lot of faith is put into them and their work. We’ve also used outside experts, and we’ve got a really good understanding of what Will needs, and no one is telling us that we shouldn’t be optimistic about returning and being able to play regularly. I think what we’re seeing with Will is that he’s able to hit a benchmark of his best very, very quickly. To just go back to even the Adelaide game on his return this year, he was exceptional. Yes, he would’ve been a player that we would’ve loved to have during our finals series, both this season and last, but hopefully he’s part of our next one.”

On Jack Gunston’s year

“Jack’s been exceptional in both his on-field and off-field performance. What I really love about Jack is that he’s never lost his belief in what he can do with his game, and I even think back to the conversations we had when he left Brisbane and thought of returning, he was really confident that he could add value to us on the field. We also knew that he had an ability to add value off the field, and I think that belief that he has in his own ability, he got his body right, he works hard, that has allowed Jack to achieve things in the game that others may not have thought he fully could, but I think deep down, Jack thought he could himself.”

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO ROB MCCARTNEY’S FULL INTERVIEW ON AFL TRADE RADIO