HAWTHORN captain Sam Mitchell says his debut as skipper won’t be made more difficult by the absence of several key players, including Shane Crawford and Campbell Brown, for the Hawks’ round-one clash against Melbourne at the MCG on Easter Sunday.

“Although we have some guys out who are more senior players, I think we’re going to have a lot of experience out on the deck anyway,” Mitchell said.

 “Some young guys are going to get opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise got until the end of the season. Hopefully they’ll make it hard for the other guys to get back in.”

With the Hawks having played finals football last year for the first time since 2001, Mitchell says the club has high expectations for the coming season.

“As a team last year we weren’t sure of how we were going to go, and we ended up being capable of playing some good footy.

“This year we’ve got more expectations of the type of way we’re capable of playing.

“If we can play that, I think we can win a lot of games of footy. Whether that takes us to the top four, I’m not sure.

“We’ve been together as a team for three years now, with the move to Waverley and a new coaching system

“I think we’ve evolved together so I think finally now it’s starting to come good – whether that’s good enough we’ll have to find out.”

Young Hawk Cyril Rioli was endorsed as one of the contenders for the AFL Rising Star in a captains’ survey conducted by the AFL, and Mitchell agrees that he is one to watch.

“I think that there’s a few guys that you’d like to keep an eye on who are going to be really good players … guys like Cyril Rioli and Cameron Stokes really showed good signs over the pre-season and look like they’ll get to play games this year.”