James Sicily has labelled Hawthorn’s new home, the Kennedy Community Centre, as a “grand” facility as the club prepares to make the move later this year. 

The transformational project, which includes two training ovals, a community pavilion and the Harris High Performance Centre, has ticked past 80 per cent completion.

The world-class complex, sitting on 28 hectares of total land, also features an indoor training hall towering four storeys high and 54 metres long. 

JOIN THE HAWKS IN 2025! CLICK HERE TO VIEW OUR POPULAR MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS

Hawthorn’s AFL and AFLW programs will both benefit, with equal provision of changerooms and player amenities, including a 25-metre lap pool, three plunge pools (hot, cold and magnesium) and a dry sauna. 

Speaking to the media during a player tour of Hawthorn’s new home on Friday afternoon, the Hawks skipper also spoke about his season so far, as well as the upcoming Gather Round. 

We summarised the key points from his press conference below. 

On the Kennedy Community Centre 

“It looks pretty grand. It’s been a long time coming and I’m excited for the opportunity that’s coming. Hopefully, we’re in sooner rather than later. I think Waverley has served us very well. We may have outgrown it a little bit but it still has everything that we need to perform. There are always new and better things on the horizon and you’re always excited by that. I think with everything being new, modern and state-of-the-art, it will give us every chance to perform at the highest level. Hopefully it can keep me around until I’m 35 or 36, that would be nice.”

On his individual season so far

“I’ve enjoyed playing with TB and JB (Tom Barrass and Josh Battle). They’ve added so much to our group. It gives me a lot of flexibility. I don’t know how to explain it but they take a bit of a mental load off my shoulders. I think when we were going through what we were going through the last three years, the expectation I put on myself to perform was so, so high but now having those guys and also the players that are a lot younger getting a lot better and playing great footy, I think there’s a bit of a weight off my shoulders to go out there and just really play my role, fit into the system and do what the team needs rather than this added expectation. I still am quite a high achiever and demand a lot of myself but sometimes I think it was to my own detriment and it kind of made me a little inapproachable as a leader and I hated that, so a lot of learnings from last year. I think the other leaders have stepped up to take the load off my shoulders.”

On Gather Round match-up 

“We’ve had a week off, had the bye this week, and everyone’s really refreshed. We’ve really consolidated a good block of work and we’re really happy with that first block. But now it’s about focusing on this next block of games and Port Adelaide is one of them. Everything’s about this next block of games and making sure that we’re taking the learnings out of the wins. We’re really focused on what we can continue to get better at and what we need to learn out of this first block of games. Even though it’s been great, we won, but how can we get better?”