{"id":551123,"date":"2026-03-19T18:53:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/551123\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T18:53:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T18:53:18","slug":"hawks-out-to-use-long-afl-break-to-their-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/551123\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawks out to use long AFL break to their advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell is embracing an extended early-season break as a chance to improve, rather than worrying about any halt in his side’s momentum.<\/p>\n

Thrashed by GWS in their season-opener, the Hawks have got their campaign back on track with victory over Essendon and a hard-fought 14.15 (99) to 13.4 (82) win over Sydney on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Now they face an 18-day lay-off, with a bye followed by the traditional Easter Monday blockbuster against Geelong.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Jack Gunston has found a rich vein of form for the Hawks this season. (James Ross\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

“If we can sustain the type of pressure and intensity that we got tonight, we’ll be a really hard side to beat,” Mitchell said after the Hawks’ latest triumph.<\/p>\n

“But if we drop off, we don’t have to look too far in our rear-view mirror to realise how vulnerable we can be.<\/p>\n

“Nothing’s clearer to the players than that exact thing.<\/p>\n

“We go into a bit of a break now at 2-1 and we can reassess and make some improvements to our game.”<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Coach Sam Mitchell isn’t worried about the Hawks’ unusually long lay-off. (Dylan Burns\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Mitchell isn’t overly concerned about the unusual lay-off, insisting his club relishes the responsibility of playing Thursday night games and the stand-alone Easter Monday clash.<\/p>\n

“We love both of those fixtures,” he said.<\/p>\n

“For us, we get a bit of a chance to reassess going into a couple of days off for our players.<\/p>\n

“We’ll try to improve a couple of things and we’ll be ready for Easter Monday.”<\/p>\n

Mitchell highlighted scoring when the ball is locked in Hawthorn’s front half as one key area to work on.<\/p>\n

One player who isn’t having much trouble scoring is Jack Gunston, who added another four goals to his tally against Sydney.<\/p>\n

Gunston’s hot form across the opening rounds prompted Melbourne great, now media commentator, Garry Lyon to suggest the 34-year-old could kick a century of goals this season.<\/p>\n

“It sounds good to me. I hope he can do that,” Mitchell grinned.<\/p>\n

“He keeps telling us that he’s going to try, so good luck to him.<\/p>\n

“It’s going to be hard if he keeps kicking 4.4 though. He’ll need to kick eight or at least seven out of that.”<\/p>\n

Former Hawthorn and Sydney star Lance Franklin was the most recent player to kick 100 goals in a season, as a teammate of Mitchell in the Hawks’ 2008 premiership campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell is embracing an extended early-season break as a chance to improve, rather than worrying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,16118,6854,12102,12936,85,34326],"class_list":["post-551123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-hawks","tag-hawthorn","tag-jack-gunston","tag-sam-mitchell","tag-sports","tag-the-hawks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551123","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=551123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}