Hawthorn Coach Sam Mitchell has stressed that his team is fully focused on the on-field battle against Port Adelaide on Sunday night at Adelaide Oval.
Mitchell also spoke about the buzz around Gather Round, the excitement around Finn Maginness’ upcoming 50th game and also the disappointment around Will Day’s injury setback.
We summarised the key points from Mitchell’s Friday morning press conference below.
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On Gather Round
“The AFL has done a fantastic job with Gather Round. Everyone who I know has been is going back and everyone who hasn’t gone, there’s a bit of FOMO and they all want to go. My family are driving over and they’re nearly there, they stayed in Stawell last night. I think half of the country ends up in Adelaide. Certainly, the whole city is a buzz.”
On the Port clash
“At the end of the day, they beat us in that game. They were better than us, their season continued and they finished our season. I’ve been really consistent in saying that we’ve got to improve and find ways to get better. We’ve proven that we can improve when we work really hard on things. There’s going to be a fantastic public narrative about this game and there’s going to be a hostile crowd and a huge environment and all those things are part and parcel of the game we play and we love that element of it. Realistically, the focus for us needs to be what happens between the sirens. Can we play a level of football that’s going to be good enough to beat a side who, despite what perhaps the public narrative is, they’re doing some things that are pretty good, they’ve gone through a little bit of change with the way they’re playing and they’ve had some personnel challenges at the start of the year but they got (Zak) Butters back last week. They’re a very good side and a very proud team and a very proud club and it’s going to be a good game.”
On Will Day’s injury
“Will’s been a really important player for us. He’s in better spirits than I thought he would be. He had surgery, which I think gives you the feeling that he’s getting better. Sometimes you have to wait for an injury to recover to feel like you can do anything whereas he’s in crutches or in a moonboot and something’s healing. He’s in pretty good spirits and he’ll have a week or two just finding his feet and making sure he can recover as well as he can so I’m sure he’ll help me and the other coaches with making sure he can help us off-field if he can’t help us on it.”
On Finn Maginness’ upcoming 50th game
“I had a chat with him this morning. So there’s 50 games and you can play 50 like Connor Macdonald where you get drafted and you play 50 before anyone’s blinked and then there’s 50 like Finn Maginness where it’s one of those really impressive stories about resilience and persistence and optimism. Just the way he’s gone about his footy and his whole attitude, I mean the way he’s changed his game over a long period of time and really refined his craft and has now become probably one of the most flexible players in the competition so I’m really proud of him and really proud that he’s able to play 50 games which is actually the third generation of 50-gamers which is the first time our club’s ever had that so it’s a really impressive story and I’m rapt for him to bring up game 50.”
Watch Mitchell’s full press conference below.
