ONE YEAR ago almost to the day, Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell sat in the press conference room at the Adelaide Oval heartbroken and dealing with the pain of having seen his team knocked out at the semi-final stage.
On Friday night, he was back at the same table, but this time with a massive sense of relief and a measured smile to boot. Hawthorn had, in their coach’s words, “exorcised the demons” of not getting over the line at a venue which has been a bit of a bugbear in recent years.
“It’s funny. There’s a sort of a sense that we needed to win here in a big game,” Mitchell said.
“We’ve played six games here in the last two years. We’ve had some pain in this venue. We actually feel like we’ve played some good footy here. We just haven’t quite been able to win.”
Hawthorn reversed the tide in dominant fashion against minor premier Adelaide, keeping their campaign on track with a dominant 34-point victory.
It wasn’t just the Crows that his team had to overcome. There was also the relentlessly deafening noise around the ground that they had to contend with. And for Mitchell, his players’ ability to battle through it all was a sign of their maturity, especially at times when the Crows pulled things back.
“That was a phenomenal stadium feel. The Adelaide fans were enormously loud. Talking on the phone from the box to the bench, if you spoke at the wrong time, they couldn’t even hear you through the phone, that’s how loud it was,” Mitchell said.
“So, for the players to be able to handle that emotion and stadium feel and to be able to fight back after them having a lot of momentum, that was an important part of the game.”
Mitchell highlighted the final few minutes of the first term where the Hawks took the lead, which they then held till the final siren.
Hawthorn went into three-quarter time with a five-goal lead under its belt. But having seen his team lose from a similar position before, Mitchell said he took a lot of confidence from the way in which they were able to maintain their momentum without letting Adelaide back in.
“The level of confidence that we have now that we have crossed that hurdle and that we’re not going to do that again,” he said.
“We’ve learned the lessons that need to be learned and some really tough ones. We were able to be spurred on and get galvanised from the pain we experienced here last year.”
Hawthorn now face Geelong next Friday night at the MCG in the preliminary final, the first meeting of the arch-rivals in September since 2016, when the Cats won by two points, and back when Mitchell was still an active player.
Speaking of ghosts from footy past, he wasn’t very keen on being reminded of that famous evening. He instead took the chance to reiterate that the Hawks are looking at the prelim weekend as merely a “stepping stone” to the “bigger things” they plan to achieve this year.
“Getting into the prelims is not the aim. But it’s going to be massive. The fact that it is Hawthorn-Geelong only adds a little bit of extra spice,” Mitchell said.
