Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell said his team's one-point loss to Yartapuulti was a 'missed opportunity'.
Speaking post-game on Sunday at Adelaide Oval, Mitchell expressed that while there may have been positives from the game, they were hard to find in the immediate moments after the heartbreaking defeat.
We've summarised some of the key points from his press conference below.
On the loss
"We're enormously disappointed. I thought the players left it all out there. There were three close (games) in a row, we've won two, and it could've easily been a similar situation. We've handled those close games pretty well. The rational part of my mind thinks sure, there are positives in the game somewhere but the emotional part of me is not feeling any of them at the minute. We competed with a good side and we fell just short."
On the final moments
"It wasn't our plan to play in a defensive manner. We would've liked to continue to score and find a way and that's our growth. I'm sure one of the learnings from the game will be thinking about how we can find ways to score and get in front because the natural instinct is to tighten everything up and play conservatively. We want to find a way to do the opposite, particularly in the first period of that (last) quarter. Once they got the heat up, we just couldn't control the narrative of the game in the last 10 minutes. I'm sure there'll be some positives but at the moment, it's such a missed opportunity. Playing against one of the best sides of the competition on their home deck with a young side, it was an exciting challenge for us. We knew we would have to be at our absolute best and we were just off that."
On the key learnings for young group
"Looking back with hindsight, there's a lot of things you would do differently as players and coaches. They just ran us down in the end. I think there will be a lot made of the last two minutes or three minutes but probably even the last 45 minutes, how we could've just found a way to score again and kick a couple more. I was enormously proud of the efforts of the players. The pressure was enormous. I thought for the day we really caused them trouble. I thought they weren't able to play the game they would like. We thought the pressure and the work rate of players was what we would need coming into a hostile environment. We knew we wanted to take the crowd out of the game and we were able to do that for large parts of it. To fall short when you do so much right is pretty disappointing. We've done a bit of work with close game scenarios and putting ourselves in winnable positions which I've spoken about regularly. We were able to put ourselves in a winnable position but not win it so we've got work to do on how to handle those situations. We're making steps and we're making progress and you can keep taking steps forward but you need to take gains, you need to take scalps when you get the chance to take them and we had the chance today and we let it slip."
On Blake Hardwick's performance
"I kind of wanted him at both ends. He's been a fantastic player for us for a long time and I'm glad he's getting some reward. It always felt to me like he was capable of kicking a few goals in the forward line. It hadn't quite clicked for him yet. Even today, he kicked four in the first quarter and finished with five. I think he's going to be a continued work in progress in his role and where he can play but he's obviously a fantastic asset for us."
Watch Mitchell's full press conference below.
