Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell has fronted the media ahead of Friday night’s showdown against the Western Bulldogs.
The Hawks coach spoke about various player availabilities, the strength of the Bulldogs’ team and the upcoming bye.
We summarised the key points from his press conference below.
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On Tom Barrass’s availability
“As long as he gets through training today, then we would think that he'll be available. If he can run and jump and feel good, then he'll be available.”
On Conor Nash’s availability
“Nashy had a sort of a strange sort of spasm in his neck, and he's still a test. If I'm honest, I was certain he was playing this time last week and only found out a couple of hours before the game, so he'll be a test again, and he's going to have to get through a bit of training, but we're more optimistic than pessimistic that he's more likely than unlikely at this stage.”
On Jack Scrimshaw’s availability
“It's a funny kind of injury. I’m not a medico, but they were very hopeful that he would get through that last training session last week and then be able to play, and he actually got worse. He's going to be out again this week and now, he could play as early as our next game after that, or it could be a a more extended, so he's trying to get some running on the on the AlterG machine and trying to get some training load into into it, but it's not behaving the way we would like that knee, so a bit frustrating for for him and for us.”
On the Bulldogs
“They're obviously a super potent team. They've played some really good footy, they've won a lot of close games in particular. We'll do a little bit of scenario training today, they're a really quality outfit. They’ve got a lot of their best players back playing. When we played them last time, they had a couple out, so we are going to have to play really well against the Dogs. We've scouted them, we've done all our oppo scouting this morning, and David Hale put a pretty good picture together of what we think they're going to bring, and we know we're going to have to be at our best because their best is very, very good.”
On the upcoming bye
“We'll give everyone a break, and I think all the players, all the staff, you want them to have a really good refresh, but let's not refresh before (the bye), let's refresh when it's time to refresh. We've been really clear with our talk with the guys about there is a time for that and for planning, but it's not now. These next 60 hours, we’ve got one focus and that's taking down the Dogs.”
Watch Mitchell’s full press conference below
