Hawthorn Executive General Manager of Football Rob McCartney has provided a detailed insight into the club’s 2026 AFL season, speaking to the Hawks Insiders crew in a wide-ranging interview following the trade and free agency period. 

McCartney touched on the recent player and coach acquisitions, the evolution of the team from when he first started at Hawthorn and what the future looks like for the brown and gold. 

We summarised the key points from McCartney’s interview below. 

CLICK HERE to listen to Rob McCartney’s full interview with Hawks Insiders

On the evolution of the team

“I remember my interview for this role was around, "What is your five-year vision?" And it was, we wanted to fast-track the development of our playing group, embed a game plan that would win finals when our turn comes, and position ourselves in five years' time to be in a premiership window. I must admit, I probably was more aspirational than hopeful when I was talking about that. But yeah, look, I think a lot of things have gone right, starting with the appointment of Sam as our senior coach, obviously, and that's been a big influence. When you think about embedding a game plan that will win finals when our turn comes, he's been pivotal in how he saw the game was going to be played when we got to this stage. And he was adamant that we were going to play a game of footy that was a little bit different to how the game was being played five years ago. You know, if you go back to 2021, defence was probably beating attack, and Sam was big on that the game, if you go through the history of it, it evolves, and it doesn't stay in one place for very long. And if we went down that line, we would have a game that, when we were good, was not going to stand up. So he definitely drove that. But then we started to look to appoint into lots of other positions across our football program. The appointment of Peter Burge was pivotal in that, the retention of Zane Leonard as our strength coach within the high-performance team was also pretty important, and then you just started to bring in other coaches to complement what Sam was obviously seeing needed to be done in the game. You look at us now, and we've got David Hale and Adrian Hickmott who have both been seen as coaches who are being talked about for senior coaching jobs. And then we keep moving forward, and we bring in Daniel Giansiracusa to that head of development role; I think that's been quite pivotal in this last period of time. So the short answer, I suppose, if I just sum all of that up: we were aspirational, we thought five years was a time period that, if you got everything right, you could be in a window of being back and competing for a premiership again.

"What I would say is that that doesn't often happen, that you get everything right. And I'm not saying we haven't had our times where we've had to go back to the drawing board and reassess where we were, but we've been really strategic about the journey that we've been on for the five years. And now we're in a position that, yes, we were 30 seconds away from making a grand final. I keep going back to saying that the right team won; I'm not suggesting that we should have won, but we were good enough to win. And that's something that, even last year, as much as we were a point down at half-time, we couldn't compete for the full (duration) of the preliminary final last year, and that's again showing the importance of the growth. So ever since we started, we've just said, "Let's look at getting better every day we walk into this environment. Let's look at seeing what is it that I can do today that'll make me better tomorrow?"

"Every season we've said to ourselves, "Okay, we've got to this point, what's the next evolution of this group?" And we've continued to strive for improvement, and that's put us in the position that we are today. It's funny, though, like you're 30 seconds away from playing a grand final, but nothing assures you again next season that you're going to be there. So the only thing that you can make sure that you do is you work hard and you continue to assess, "Are we getting everything that we need to get right to give us our best chance?" And that's what we'll continue to do.”

On Hawthorn’s off-season acquisitions 

Zach Merrett
“I think he knows that he's achieved a lot of individual accolades in the game, but you get to his age and you can see the finish line sort of in front of you, and what you would like to go out with is something that balances out that, and that is team success. And he is hell-bent on helping us get better, and hell-bent on us striving for that 14th flag. So he's definitely an excited young fellow who can't wait, because he's already had a period of four or five weeks more than our players where he hasn't played any footy, and he's watching through the finals series, thinking, "Well, if I did play for Hawthorn, this is what it's going to be like." We all know what the crowd was like at the MCG, but even our game over in Perth, as much as it wasn't as many Hawk supporters in the house, it was loud, it was exciting, it's what you play footy to do, and I think he's pretty excited if we can get back to that stage and he can influence then the result at the end of the day.” 

Ben King
“We're extremely lucky. Jack Gunston's playing some of the best footy of his career, so we wouldn't be doing this to compromise Jack or compromise our performance. But what we also see is that Ben is 26. He's on the long journey with us, so it's not like he's a 30-year-old who we're going to get a couple of sugar-hit seasons out of. He's on the longer-term journey of this club, and he could be part of a period that is a really successful one for the Hawks.”

Josh Goater
“He’s four or five years in the system, he's only played games in the teens, hasn't been able to get his body quite right. So first and foremost, we need to get to understand him as an athlete and as a footballer, so that we can give him the opportunity that so many of our players have been able to experience at the Hawks in recent years of playing consistently. So that's first and foremost for him when he gets to us, take the time to get to know him.  And the Hawks have a history of being able to get the best out of players. I think the most talked about story is Shaun Burgoyne, but there's so many others - whether they've been in our system and have succumbed to certain injuries and they've worked out the other side of it, the professionalism of that medical high-performance team at the Hawks is an absolute superpower of our club. He's a half-backer, he can intercept, but he can also rebound, and he can use his feet. We’re getting a younger player into that group, getting to see what he can do, getting him to push for an opportunity to play AFL footy obviously in '27, but keep a bit more of a longer-term view of him as well, because we will have to evolve over the next couple of years in that space.”

Dion Prestia (Development Coach)
“I think we have around 10 coaches in our coaching group, and what we're looking for is different skills that more or less complement each other. So the skills of Jason Johannisen and Dion, they're very recent from the game. They understand the game from a player's perspective better than most. What we also liked about Dion, though, is that he's been a player who's worked hard at his game. He's got a thirst for the competition that is part of AFL footy. And, you know, he's been a student of the game as well. The feedback we got from Richmond is that in games, if something needs to change, the message would go to Dion for him to then disseminate it amongst the rest of the players. So he feels and sees the game well, and then hopefully that then transitions into coaching it to players as well.”

On the impact of the Kennedy Community Centre 

“It's been a game changer. Sam told them from day one, as much as it's shiny and new and it's got so many things that will help you as a player, if you don't invest in terms of the work that needs to be done, it won't make a difference. What we've seen is our players spend more time here on recovery than what they did previously. So being able to have a healthy list, players having the ability to play consecutive games, has been something that's shone through this season. And what we're seeing is that players will stay and do more recovery post their training session, or post the game they'll come in on their day off and use this facility as their recovery pavilion. But there are numerous things about this building that have given us an advantage, but the advantage only comes after we work hard within it. 

“It's helping our staff, too. What we're finding here, which never happened at Waverley, is that our football department staff and also our administrative staff are coming to work early and spending time in the gym, spending time in the pools and saunas, and then those who don't like to wake up early, they're staying after work and using the facilities. It's created a great culture of looking after yourself and being your personal best, whether you're a player or a staff person.” 

On the future of the club 

“It was a tough way to finish the season in 2026, and I actually haven't watched the game (prelim) back yet, I will, but I haven't yet, and I reckon there's a few who are in the same boat that are hurting a little, if not a lot. But we'll get over that. We've already started to look forward. I think the trade period was a great time for us to put our energies into what our future might look like, so bringing in Merrett and King. We had two priorities when we hit that trade period: the first was bringing in high-end talent in our positional needs, and we felt our positional needs were the midfield and key forward posts, and we've nailed that. We've also got through trade period with a future draft hand that's stronger than the one that we started with, and we're still in a position in this draft to look at young Keenan Boi, should he present at the range that we see him as a player. So the beauty about this is that, you know, we've now been able to look forward from the disappointment of the prelim final loss, but also probably what it's done is it's given us a bit of time to say we should be amazingly proud of our players. They played their best footy at the end of the season, they gave themselves every chance to play in a Grand Final. Unfortunately, unfortunately we didn't get there, and the team that did ended up being the best team in the competition. So we're not that far off. 

“If we can get better next year, you know, we give ourselves another chance, but what we also know in this game is that Brisbane will still be a good team. Fremantle have got a demographic of a young list that should continue to improve without adding players to it, the Swans had players who didn't play that will make them better, and Geelong has probably had a trade period similar to us where they've brought in players that should make their list stronger next year. So there's no certainty, but we have done what we needed to do in the trade period to make ourselves better and give ourselves a chance, and what I can tell you is that players and staff at this football club are doing everything they possibly can to get to that point where we can add another cup and put the 14th one in our new home at KCC.”

CLICK HERE to listen to Rob McCartney’s full interview with Hawks Insiders