A frustrating failure to beat the AFL’s top sides has Hawthorn desperate to get the better of Geelong on Easter Monday at the MCG,

Ahead of his 100th game in charge of the Hawks, coach Sam Mitchell said Hawthorn had to “develop a game style” that will stood up in “finals and against the best teams”.

“Look at the journey and what we tried to start, what we tried to develop, and there is a level of ‘we’re on the right track, but not there yet’ about it,” Mitchell said on Tuesday.

“We want to be an exciting team. We want to get fans to games. We want to play a brand that stands up in big moments.

“Last year, we played against the two grand-finalists (Brisbane and Geelong) four times, and we couldn’t win those games.

“One of them being Geelong … they’ve been too good for us. We need to continue to improve our game to make sure that we can beat the best sides, and they’re one of them.”

The Hawks have lost seven of their past eight encounters with the Cats.

“Games between Hawthorn and Geelong are games people want to see, but they’ve won far too many of them over the journey,” Mitchell said.

“We need to start to right that ship. They’re a quality side. They’ve been annoyingly good for a long time, and we’ll try to do our part for the rest of the competition and take them down on Monday.”

Mitchell took heart from Brisbane’s journey to back-to-back premierships in remaining confident that Hawthorn’s well-established list would eventually lead the club to a flag.

“We figured out who we thought would be our future premiership players,” he said.

“If you look at Brisbane prior to their premierships (in 2024 and 2025), if you go back four or five years before that, they were playing the same list over and over and over and over again, almost regardless of performance.
“Then all these players that might be a bit slow burn at the start, they all pop up and become great players and premiership players.

“It’s not that we copied them necessarily, but it is a model where … it takes 50 games to become a consistent AFL performer at least, (and) for some it takes more than that.

“You’re not going to be a consistent AFL team before you get enough players to that point. The best sides have proven that over a long period.”

The Hawks won’t be able to used tiredness as an excuse if they lose on Monday, having not played since beating Sydney by 17 points on March 19.

“We had four days off to start, and then basically it’s been back to a normal sort of routine for us,” Mitchell said.

“We trained quite hard on the weekend just gone. We had a really tough session on Saturday. You can get a pretty quick shock if you’re not ready.”

Originally published as Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell demands his team stands up in big games