Across the 2016 and 2017 trade periods, Hawthorn traded out three players.
Three players, 876 games, 12 premiership medallions, eight Peter Crimmins Medals, seven All Australian honours, two Norm Smith Medals and one Brownlow.
Farewelling Jordan Lewis and Sam Mitchell in 2016 and then Luke Hodge the following year was, in many ways, the signalling of the end of an era.
But it was also the beginning of a new one.
Two and three years on from these respective trade periods, we’ve taken a look back at those trades to see what has come of them so far.
Read: Wingard's tale of two stories
Sam Mitchell
Sam Mitchell was the first of this trio to depart the brown and gold with the Hawks sending Mitchell and picks 54 and 72 west in exchange for Picks 52, 70 and 88.
Within hours, Pick 52 was on-traded to Sydney to help facilitate the Tom Mitchell deal.
The following month, the Hawks took a young Murray Bushranger Harry Morrison at the national draft with what turned out to be Pick 74 before passing on the 88th pick.
Tom Mitchell went on to win the next two Peter Crimmins Medals and the 2018 Brownlow, while setting all sorts of records along the way.
Morrison has played 31 games in the opening three seasons of his career and shown obvious promise at AFL level.
Oh, and three years later, we got Mitch back on our coaching staff three years later!
Jordan Lewis
Four days after Mitchell’s departure, Jordan Lewis also left the Hawks fold.
Hawthorn sent Lewis to Melbourne in return for Pick 48 and 66.
These picks were then packaged with Pick 70 in an all-important, last-minute swap with Carlton that saw the Hawks secure Greater Western Sydney’s second round pick in 2017.
This GWS selection was the last piece in the puzzle to be paired with Pick 10 in order to finally register Jaeger O’Meara a Hawk in a nerve-wracking final half an hour of the trade period.
After an injury-restricted debut year at the Ricoh Centre in which he featured just six times at AFL level, O’Meara has since played 21 games in each of the past two seasons, at an average of just shy of 25 disposals per game.
A member of the club’s 2019 leadership group, O’Meara is beginning to enter his prime years as one of the key figures in Hawthorn’s on-ball brigade.
Luke Hodge
A year later, Luke Hodge now famously had a change of heart on his retirement plans after deciding to extend his decorated career at the Brisbane Lions.
The Hawks traded Hodge and Pick 44 in return for Pick 43 and 75.
As the draft panned out, those selections turned into Pick 45 and Pick 71.
At the 45th spot, the Hawks swooped on Geelong Falcons co-captain James Worpel, before later taking Jackson Ross.
Worpel’s rise in his two years has been outstanding, playing 11 games in his first season before appearing in every match of the Hawks’ 2019 campaign.
Put simply, the 20-year-old was a stand-out this year, recording more disposals than any other Hawk and topping 30 disposals or more in five of his last seven games.
Meanwhile Ross is yet to make his senior debut but has shown promise for Box Hill at VFL level, finishing second on the league-wide goals tally this year.
