Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell was impressed with his sides efforts in Perth on Sunday afternoon, taking a 61-point win over the Eagles on their home deck.
Speaking post-game, Mitchell detailed his thoughts on the Hawks performance overall, how every win is important at this stage of the season and his knowledge on Captain James Sicily’s shoulder.
Take a look at the key points from Mitchell’s post-match press conference below.
On the win
“I think we defended quite well, we restricted their score heavily, they only had 33 inside 50s, so pleased with that aspect of the game. I just thought we looked like a tough side today. There was a bit of physicality in the game, and I thought we handled that pretty well. A lot of missed opportunities, especially early but I think anytime you go to Western Australia, and you play against West Coast on their home deck it’s a tough day. It’s a long time since we won out of Victoria or Tassie, and I was really pleased the players were able to respond off a bye in a challenging environment.”
Influence of midfield group
“A lot of it was around the pressure and even if we didn’t win the first possession, being able to nullify what they were trying to do. I think Meeky (Lloyd Meek) had a good day today, got his hand on a lot. I thought our fast feet and it wasn’t necessarily a perfect ruck hit out to a perfect play, it was a lot of craft that they do and winning the body work. Being able to get after a loose ball was really important for us. I thought we were clean, I think when you travel interstate and play on a surface you haven’t played on before sometimes your ball handling can lose its way a little bit, particularly early but I thought our boys were really clean.”
The importance of every win
“We know that to get where we want to go a side, we’ve got plenty of work to do. We went into this season thinking we need to put ourselves in winnable positions much more often than we have and we’ve been able to do that for the most part. But there’s lots of stepping stones to become the team that you want to be, one of them is obviously winning on the road. You can’t afford to be a team in this national competition that loses away all the time, and that has been us, unfortunately.
“So that’s a step forward for our maturity today, to be able to get a win on the road. Hopefully that’s the first of a run, because we’re going to have to play more interstate games coming up and we need to be able to win them on the road. That’s what the best sides do, doesn’t matter where they play they perform, we haven’t’ been that just yet but that’s what we’re working towards.
“We know that every game for us is important and talking to our players and they’re actually loving that because it’s been a fair while, and certainly in my coaching time, where every game really matter for your season. So that continues to be a challenge for us, but the boys are thriving under that environment at the moment.”
Sicily’s shoulder
“Not sure, he was telling me he wanted to come back on, but we started him on the bench. I didn’t think the game was quite over at three-quarter time I thought they were still, with a home crowd if they get a quick goal or two that we would’ve put him back out there. But once it went five or six minutes, we decided okay I think we can afford to leave him off. He’ll have assessments through the week, and we’ll see how he goes.”
Watch Mitchell’s full post-game press conference below.
