HAWTHORN skipper Sam Mitchell says honourable losses such as Friday night’s 11-point defeat to the Premier Cats at the MCG are no longer good enough for the Waverley-based side.

“Honourable losses a couple of years ago might have been acceptable,” Mitchell said.

“At this point where we are in our development, we’ve still got some young players and you can come up with as many excuses as you like as to why we didn’t win, but at the end of the day it was in our control and we just weren’t good enough.”

However Mitchell admitted that although the side has gained some encouragement from their performance, the Hawks’ standards were now set high.

“We’re in the ball park, we’re not miles off it. I think it’s funny when you lose and you read the paper and everyone says how good your effort was. We probably think we played okay but the kudos should go to Geelong. They were too good for us on the night and we made too many mistakes to be competitive and we need to improve those things… we don’t want to just mix it with the top sides, we want to beat them.”