Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell has praised the loyal brown and gold faithful for their support after the club smashed through its membership record on Thursday morning.
With 83,901 members (and counting) signed up, Mitchell reflected on the support he has felt from day one of his time in the brown and gold when speaking to the media.
Mitchell also addressed the benefit of a longer break this week, as well as how his side plans to attack the reigning premiers on Saturday afternoon at the MCG.
We summarised the key points from Mitchell's press conference below.
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On the club's membership record
"I couldn’t be more proud of the Hawthorn faithful. I know right from four years ago when I came into the role, I felt that even with some pretty dark days in there, I think the support’s always been enormous. To get our membership record, second year in a row, it just shows the growth of the people who are supporting us in our journey. I think the fan number that we’ve had out in all of our games have been first class and I’m sure it’ll be the same thing on the weekend against the reigning premier so we’re looking forward to having plenty of brown and gold in the stands. I think the club do a really good job of promoting the club and making sure that everyone feels connected to it. What sport does is it gives you a connection. I’m up at five in the morning watching sport with my son and we share that emotion. It’s a bit the same for people who turn up to the MCG on Saturday, you share emotion with the people next to you and the more Hawthorn people we can have sharing and connecting over what our players do on the field, the better and I feel like we can continue sharing the journey with them."
On the longer break this week
"We’ve been able to get a little extra training in this week, obviously we’ve been a little light over the last little period but the players are in good spirits. We know they’re really disappointed with last weekend. We know we’ve improved, you know, we look at the last 12 months and say we’re making progress but we can’t yet beat the best sides consistently and we’re going to need to be able to. I heard Fages saying this morning that it’s a long season and there’s ebs and flows and you need to make sure you’re in it for the long haul. I think we’ve put ourselves in a good position but Brisbane are a good test. It’s another top four side for us to play against and see where we’re at."
On Brisbane's midfielders
"The midfield is going to be a huge battle. We know that getting the ball into your front half against a side like Brisbane is vital so we need to work out exactly the strategy and structure that we have. They’ve got so many talented players so whether we go after one or two of those individually or whether we look at a collective system to try to create some clearance dominance for us. The challenge of the Brisbane midfield is not too dissimilar to the Gold Coast midfield so I think when you look at these teams who are at the top of the ladder, they’ve got some stars on every line so we can’t afford to overresource the midfield too much because it comes at the expense of something else. What we need to do is throw our own punches and make sure we’re playing in an assertive and offensive way as possible to try and create some problems for them."
Watch Mitchell's full press conference below.
