HAWTHORN Recruiting and List Manager Graham Wright says all parties involved in the Sam Mitchell trade are comfortable with the process, which resulted in a trade being finalised today.
Speaking to the media at the Ricoh Centre today, Wright said Mitchell was happy with the move which will see him play with the West Coast Eagles next season.
“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind over the last few days, obviously with Sam being traded this morning but I suppose for us it’s a sad day and certainly for a lot of supporters,” he said.
“There’s always going to be mixed reaction – we understand that.
“It’s an emotional game and the supporters are very attached to Sam and what he’s done for this football club, which has been outstanding.
“But we’ve got an extremely happy player who is very keen to move on with the rest of his life and his future."
With speculation surrounding vice-captain Jordan Lewis’ future at Hawthorn, Wright added the club was not considering trading the midfielder.
“He (Lewis) was never put on the trade table,” he said.
He had an open and honest discussion with Clarko (Alastair Clarkson) a couple of weeks ago about what his future would look like, which Clarko has all the time with players – whether it’s about their future or their form or position they play, anything like that.
“That conversation was had, Jordan’s management explored whether there might be something else for him after next year if he happened to finish up.
“From that perspective it was brought to us on Tuesday night, we had a brief conversation with Melbourne on Wednesday and then with Jordan yesterday and as of yesterday afternoon we decided that we really didn’t want Jordan to go anywhere and he’s a required and contracted player."
Hawthorn are still in the process of talking to the Gold Coast Suns about a potential trade which would see Jaeger O’Meara move to Waverley, with the two clubs to continue their talks into next week.
“We’re talking. I’m sure we’ll catch up (with Gold Coast) in the next day or two – that’s where we sit at the moment,” Wright said.
“I’m unsure about (the deal being done early next week), there’s a fair bit of water to go under the bridge in relation to what we can do but we’ve got ongoing conversations with Gold Coast.”
Wright was also quick to deny Hawthorn was in the process of a ‘rebuild’.
“I think we’ve still got a pretty talented team, so I’m not quite sure whether sure ‘rebuild’ is the word I would use, I would have thought we’re trying to get better.
“Now losing a high-quality player like Sam who’s just won our best and fairest, you’d probably hesitate to say we’ve got better today, but we’ll try to get better in the future.”
