this season would be his last<\/a>.<\/p>\n“He’s such an amazing person – his attitude to doing his knee in a game like that, there are a lot of different ways you can look at it,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
“He was saying ‘well, the game doesn’t owe me anything, and of all the games to do it, it’s probably getting closer to the end, I’d rather do it then’.<\/p>\n
“Is this the way he’d hope it would finish? Of course not.”<\/p>\n
Hawthorn has come from eighth to make the preliminary final, while Geelong has enjoyed the week off after its emphatic qualifying final win over Brisbane.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty easy for me to sell to our players that you’d rather be us, but I don’t imagine it’s very hard for (Geelong coach) Chris Scott to sell ‘well, we’re a bit more rested’,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
“History will be told by the winner … time will tell.”<\/p>\n
The Hawks made a hot start against Adelaide, killing off the game, and Mitchell laughed when asked if they could catch the Cats napping.<\/p>\n
“Don’t tell them we’re coming, yeah,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
“We’re ready for whatever comes.<\/p>\n
“We’ve come this far playing a certain way, so we’re not going to change it now.”<\/p>\n
Josh Weddle celebrates a goal during Hawthorn’s semi-final against Adelaide on September 12, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
Hawthorn and Geelong have a big history over the past two decades, featuring the “Kennett Curse”, with plenty of memorable clashes.<\/p>\n
“Our players, probably 10 of them, grew up Hawks fans, so some of them will bring it up and they have some old memories, things like that,” Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve played some good footy without really hitting our straps. Probably last week, we were close to our best.<\/p>\n
“We’re in a confident position – I imagine Geelong are sitting down the highway, feeling pretty good about where they’re at.”<\/p>\n
Mitchell spoke of “business as usual” this week at Waverley and noted they are not featuring in Brownlow Medal forecasts.<\/p>\n
“I don’t imagine we’re going to be right at the top in the votes – we’re probably not going to have a standout player,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to be reasonably even across the group, and that’s been a strength of what we’ve produced this year so far.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Gunston (left) and Jack Ginnivan celebrate during the match between Hawthorn and Melbourne at the MCG in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-148879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}