Club Focus Hawthorn 2020 - Hartigan, Phillips, Grainger-Barras, Mitchell, Downie, Brockman

AFL Club Focus

What does Hawthorn most need this off-season?

  • A key forward

    Votes: 15 26.3%
  • A key defender

    Votes: 10 17.5%
  • An inside mid

    Votes: 7 12.3%
  • An outside mid

    Votes: 23 40.4%
  • Other

    Votes: 2 3.5%

  • Total voters
    57

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Over time we are intending to post one of these for each club. Since there's an appetite for Hawthorn discussion I'll start this one now.

This is a Hawthorn-specific version of the player contracts & statistics spreadsheet pinned to the top of this forum. It summarises your players' contract situations, experience, ages and heights. The data is from footywire, and the spreadsheet will update itself when footywire is updated.





Based on this data, Hawthorn are;
- the oldest list in the comp, with an average age of 25.1 years
- the second most experience list with an average of 84.2 career games
- have an average height of 188.4cm, which is the seventh tallest in the AFL
- have the shortest average contract length in the league

Your picks in the first five rounds of the draft are:
1st round pick (tied to Hawthorn - currently pick 4)
2nd round pick (tied to Hawthorn - currently pick 22)
3rd round pick (tied to Port Adelaide - currently pick 46)
5th round pick (tied to Hawthorn - currently pick 76)
5th round pick (tied to Collingwood - currently pick 89)

To check the draft order (updated weekly) see the thread here.


So, Hawks fans, who do you want to re-sign, and who is on the trade table?

Where do you see the gaps in the list as it stands?

Which players do you think are gettable to fill those needs?

What will it take, given the current trade and draft value on hand?
 
Ricky Henderson has been in the league for 10 years. He’s out of contract. Does this make him a free agent or a delisted free agent? He will likely get a new 1 year deal.
 

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Ricky Henderson has been in the league for 10 years. He’s out of contract. Does this make him a free agent or a delisted free agent? He will likely get a new 1 year deal.
Lifetime free agency was agreed to in the last CBA discussion but was delayed until 2019. I don't think the AFL has publicly released the list of free-agents yet and as such footywire is probably working off the previous list published in March. Henderson will become a free agent at the end of this year under the new rules.


Minchington is contracted until next year.
I don't have the ability to update minor details in the spreadsheet, all of the data is drawn directly from footywire with no realistic way of override small parts of it (especially given I would need to do that for 18 clubs worth of data and I don't get paid for doing it, so it'll just have to be what it is as that's the best we can do).
 
Great work Lore, I'm a keen follower of your excellent Draft Picks thread, thanks for all your work on these.

Agree that Hawthorn's list is probably at the most interesting stage of any club's given the (old) age profile and lack of any significant number of highly promising youngsters. It seems that their future hopes are very much on the FA bandwagon. Going to be a fascinating trade and draft period for them, a real snakes and ladders situation IMO.
 

Rad Roo

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Great work Lore, I'm a keen follower of your excellent Draft Picks thread, thanks for all your work on these.

Agree that Hawthorn's list is probably at the most interesting stage of any club's given the (old) age profile and lack of any significant number of highly promising youngsters. It seems that their future hopes are very much on the FA bandwagon. Going to be a fascinating trade and draft period for them, a real snakes and ladders situation IMO.

If done well then you can say a team has been getting in a cluster of master stroke FA recruits but if things don't work out too well, then hawthorn becomes the dumping ground for mid tier players who have been washed up at their previous clubs. While hawthorn has a good track record of turning b graders into A graders, the sheer weight of these players without the elite talents will make it very difficult for hawthorn to get back to flag contention. Hawthorn will always be around the 8 but ultimately for flag assault, you need half a dozen elite players plus a continuous influx of b graders that you can turn into better players. Hawthorn's A graders are all but gone. The later recruits like Jaeger, Mitchell are not of the same class as the previous batch.
 

TylerDurden

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If done well then you can say a team has been getting in a cluster of master stroke FA recruits but if things don't work out too well, then hawthorn becomes the dumping ground for mid tier players who have been washed up at their previous clubs. While hawthorn has a good track record of turning b graders into A graders, the sheer weight of these players without the elite talents will make it very difficult for hawthorn to get back to flag contention. Hawthorn will always be around the 8 but ultimately for flag assault, you need half a dozen elite players plus a continuous influx of b graders that you can turn into better players. Hawthorn's A graders are all but gone. The later recruits like Jaeger, Mitchell are not of the same class as the previous batch.
How can you pot Mitchell? His year last year was one of the greats. One of the most astute pick ups of recent times.
 
Over time we are intending to post one of these for each club. Since there's an appetite for Hawthorn discussion I'll start this one now.

This is a Hawthorn-specific version of the player contracts & statistics spreadsheet pinned to the top of this forum. It summarises your players' contract situations, experience, ages and heights. The data is from footywire, and the spreadsheet will update itself when footywire is updated.





Based on this data, Hawthorn are;
- the oldest list in the comp, with an average age of 25.1 years
- the second most experience list with an average of 84.2 career games
- have an average height of 188.4cm, which is the seventh tallest in the AFL
- have the shortest average contract length in the league

Your picks in the first five rounds of the draft are:
1st round pick (tied to Hawthorn - currently pick 4)
2nd round pick (tied to Hawthorn - currently pick 22)
3rd round pick (tied to Port Adelaide - currently pick 46)
5th round pick (tied to Hawthorn - currently pick 76)
5th round pick (tied to Collingwood - currently pick 89)

To check the draft order (updated weekly) see the thread here.


So, Hawks fans, who do you want to re-sign, and who is on the trade table?

Where do you see the gaps in the list as it stands?

Which players do you think are gettable to fill those needs?

What will it take, given the current trade and draft value on hand?

Frawley has triggered a contract for next year. Tom Mitchell signed on with a 5 year deal when he crossed over.
 

chickentendies

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Mar 26, 2017
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If done well then you can say a team has been getting in a cluster of master stroke FA recruits but if things don't work out too well, then hawthorn becomes the dumping ground for mid tier players who have been washed up at their previous clubs. While hawthorn has a good track record of turning b graders into A graders, the sheer weight of these players without the elite talents will make it very difficult for hawthorn to get back to flag contention. Hawthorn will always be around the 8 but ultimately for flag assault, you need half a dozen elite players plus a continuous influx of b graders that you can turn into better players. Hawthorn's A graders are all but gone. The later recruits like Jaeger, Mitchell are not of the same class as the previous batch.

Mitchell won a Brownlow...
 

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Davo-27

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our list is in trouble, i've said this for awhile now, obviously i was hopeful things could turn around with a top 4 finish after home and away games in 2018 and our VFL team winning the premiership, but now that those achievements are memories and we now have to face some hard truths, im a little worried.

my concerns for our list as it is and where it is heading is the main issue, we have a bunch of players over 30, that is not the issue, it is how these players have performed over the last couple of years and how they are projected to perform in the coming years that is the concern and explaining that to people is really hard when they are emotionally clinging to the past of our triple premiership years.

i could name 15-20 players that either arent good enough or have hit the wall as far as performance is concerned, then theres the lack of talented youth, we dont lack youth, we lack high end youth and leadership, which is another HUGE issue we are struggling with atm, our only real youth 25 and under is Impey, Sicily, Hardwick, Worpel, Scrimshaw, Lewis and maybe Ross/Koschitzke? the rest of our youth is uncertain at best.

thats 6!, potentially 8 players of any worth 25 and under, let that sink in for a second.

as for our veterans, the only ones playing at even a decent standard is Henderson, McEvoy the rest we are lucky to get a burst of form every so often, but only if we are lucky.

we lack a core group, one is forming with Mitchell, JOM, Worpel and Sicily, but we lack any real leaders among the group, they all have a follower or immature base to their personalities.

everyone seems to think we will get Cognilio from the Giants and that Patton will be an answer to our forward options and recently people are starting to understand the draft is something we need to spend more time building from.

the strategy seems to be retire or drop list cloggers for salary cap space and then go after free agents or trades, i personally dont like this strategy as the market will dictate what we can do within these parameters, its likely we retire a few and drop some list cloggers throw around a bunch of cash offers and if we do it poorly we will hurt our salary cap like Carlton has done for the last 2 decades(Kouta and Judd taking up too much salary cap space) and designated themselves to mediocrity OR they will land a bunch of mercenaries of mixed value and hope it all works out.... both strategies seem very lazy and likely to fail imo, especially in our lists condition with a lack of core players.

of the players who could retire/leave: any of Burgoyne, Roughead, Birchall, Smith(trade WB?), Puopolo, Ceglar, Howe, Schoenmakers, Mohr, Brand, Miles, Glass, Mirra, Pittonet, Hanrahan could be gone, plus any rookies who are not likely to make it

these are my thoughts on Hawthorns List situation in 2019...
 
Last edited:

M Malice

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Looking over their list there's not a lot there to excite going forward IMO, it will be a masterstroke of immense proportions if they can stay in top 4 contention for large parts of the season over the next 3-4 years.

If any club can do it though it would be the Hawks, they are an elite club.

IMO they should try and get as many top end picks in the draft as they can and target the next 3 drafts to get in elite young talent.
 
It’s a shame they’re in desperate need for key position players, because most of them should be boned.

Not many I’d keep but you can’t get rid of them all at once. Schoenmakers and O’Brien would be a good start.
 
So, Hawks fans, who do you want to re-sign, and who is on the trade table?
Of the 2019 out of contract crew, I'd go with the below table.

Birchall, Burgoyne and Minchington get 1 yr deals if they play out the season without issue, otherwise they're added to the 6 delisted players I've considered below.

Ceglar, Smith, Pittonet(has some interest from a Vic club), Howe and Morrison up for trade. Noting that Smith and Ceglar are the only ones who might get any bites, but we would be wanting 2nd, 3rd or 4th round picks for our draft hand to match bids for our F/S & NGA kids, not necessarily first rounders.

The key is to not cut away too much of our experience/depth in one off season, so Mirra, Burgoyne, Birchall and O'Brien get 1yr deals that perhaps they might not get at another time.

I'd be reluctant to put Bruest up for trade and lose him, as he's a genuine star small forward which are rare(who knows what he, Gunston, Wingard and another tall like Patton could do with some decent supply). It would need to be a superb trade offer to have him on the table.

With the delistings I've made below our Average Age drops almost 2 years and the age profile looks far more balanced overall.

14​
Grant BirchallUnrestricted Free Agent20191 yr on form
2Jarryd RougheadUnrestricted Free Agent2019Delist
25Ryan SchoenmakersUnrestricted Free Agent2019Delist
9Shaun BurgoyneUnrestricted Free Agent20191 yr on form
28Paul PuopoloRestricted Free Agent2019Delist
29William Langford (Rookie)Restricted Free Agent2019Delist
29Changkuoth Jiath (Rookie)Non-Free Agent20192 yrs
13Conor GlassNon-Free Agent20191 yr
44Damon Greaves (Rookie)Non-Free Agent20191 yr on form
38Darren MinchingtonNon-Free Agent20191 yr on form
32David MirraNon-Free Agent20191 yr
36Dylan MooreNon-Free Agent20192 yrs
40Harrison Jones (Rookie)Non-Free Agent20192 yrs
37Jackson RossNon-Free Agent20192 yrs
46James CousinsNon-Free Agent20192 yrs
12James FrawleyNon-Free Agent20191 yr
18Jonathon CeglarNon-Free Agent2019Trade
27Marc PittonetNon-Free Agent20191 yr
47Ned Reeves (Rookie)Non-Free Agent20192 yrs
31Ricky HendersonNon-Free Agent20191 yr
42Teia MilesNon-Free Agent2019Delist
23Tim O'BrienNon-Free Agent20191 yr
39Timothy Mohr (Rookie)Non-Free Agent2019Delist
3Tom MitchellNon-Free Agent20193 yrs
45Will Golds (Rookie)Non-Free Agent20191 yr


Where do you see the gaps in the list as it stands?
Midfield depth, talls and a couple of grunts/role players with mongrel.

Also depends on how Jiath, Ross, Lewis and Jones develop over the second half of the year too as they all show varying levels of promise.


Which players do you think are gettable to fill those needs?
Hawthorn have been rumoured/linked to 8 different players just off the top of my head. We'd be talking to every manager who has a tall forward in their keeping who is wanting opportunities.

I'd think only two or three of those players are attainable this year(lots of people saying Patton is already across the line), unless we are really open to some ruthless trading.

What will it take, given the current trade and draft value on hand?
We'll use our first. That seems a given.
We'll quite possibly look to trade up even earlier with that pick.
I think Smith will be traded to a club wanting that finishing touch(Dogs, Melbourne).
We'll most likely trade out our 2nd round pick for a player, leaving a couple of 3rd and 4th round picks we've collected during trade week to match for Maginness/Pepper.
 

Davo-27

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as for the list of players out of contract:

Langford - already left footy

i would let go:
Birchall - injured for most of 2 1/2 seasons, some fair well games this season to see him off
Roughead - even though he is a man players look up to, he has been well past his prime and i would move him on
Schoenmakers - out of favour, ok for structure and an ok forward
Burgoyne - i think he has hit the end of the road, fumbling, missing too many goals going 9.15 the last 2 yrs compared to his amazing accuracy previously, slowing down overall, soft tissue injuries, its time i believe.
Puopolo - was always the best pressure guy in the league, now opposition defenders dont fear his tackling anymore, still does an ok job as a pressure guy, but if he only does ok as a pressure guy his goals become more needed to round out his game imo, which is the opposite to whats happening, time has come
Glass - has moved to the mid, i just dont think he has what it takes to make it in the AFL, i would cut this experiment this off-season
Minchington - has been injured, but then didnt play very well at VFL level, so im thinking his 2nd chance has been used up.
Mirra - out of favour, his average to poor disposal at times hurt his career, might be relegated back to VFL football
Ceglar - i think the club wants to go towards a 1 ruck style or 2 ruck style with Lewis or Reeves going forward or rucking while McEvoy does?
Pittonet - really good VFL ruck that hasnt got the tools to play AFL other than backup
Miles - has not put on hardly any weight since drafted, which has held him back
O'Brien - has moved to the backline with mixed results, i guess the club sees him as a squad player, im not a fan
Mohr - was recruited as a backup tall defender and then did his knee within the first month, retired most likely

players i would re-sign:
Jiath - potential
Greaves - potential
Moore - has been reasonably good at AFL level and was the VFL Finals hero
Jones - potential
Ross - averages close to 3 goals a game at VFL - potential
Frawley - if his health concerns are ok, headaches, back ect, then ok?
Reeves - young tap ruck
Henderson - earned another year
T.Mitchell - if he is unsigned we need to sign him up
Golds - 1 more year?
Cousins - depth/squad player
 

Rad Roo

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Okay settle your horses, the cutting all the older players and other list cloggers is a bigfooty thing, i highly doubt Hawthorn would actually go ahead and do this. However the concern is there as the core list that you build around are all 30 and over. The inclusion of wingard, omera, mitchell will inject some class but not enough to stem the tide of an aging and declining list. Patton and congnilio are but stop gap solutions and both would require at least 1 million and 850k respective. To get both, you have to get rid of at least half a dozen of existing established players and more if its the lesser players. Also when other players sees the FA gets big pay, they will want to asking for more and since the club no longer has the leadership of the likes of Hodge, Mitchells, Lewis, soon Roughead then the culture will no longer be the same. To hawthorn culture is as much a result of the coaching as a result of the leadership collective. That collective is no longer there.
 

Loken

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It's like the article in the paper today. "Player managers no longer consider Hawthorn a destination club".

No surprise as their top clients want success so the only players going to Hawthorn will be those with injury history and are hoping they can resurrect their career or average players that aren't in high demand. Paton is the perfect example. Giants don't need/want him any more and coming off 3 knee recos, he knows he is running out of options.

Davo-27 above has a realistic view of the trouble this list is in and they have many years of no success to come.
 
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It's like the article in the paper today. "Player managers no longer consider Hawthorn a destination club".
Ahh the good old papers.

Just watch the headlines when Patton goes to the Hawks "Hawks take a huge gamble on a guy that's has 3 knee recos"

In steps that Essendon Dodo bloke with an offer and the headlines will be "Can getting Patton to Essendon propel them to the top 4"

Bookmark it.
 
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It's like the article in the paper today. "Player managers no longer consider Hawthorn a destination club".

No surprise as their top clients want success so the only players going to Hawthorn will be those with injury history and are hoping they can resurrect their career or average players that aren't in high demand. Paton is the perfect example. Giants don't need/want him any more and coming off 3 knee recos, he knows he is running out of options.

Davo-27 above has a realistic view of the trouble this list is in and they have many years of no success to come.
So last off season we brought in Scrimshaw, Scully and Wingard. How about we strike out this off season before declaring that no good players will want to come to us.
 
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Good to see this has already turned into a s**tcan hawthorn thread. Maybe we should throw our hat in the ring for Fantasia now that he wants out of the bombers
Not so much that, but we are on a main board (not a team board) and people won't always have favourable opinions about your club or players. You're always welcome to defend your club and provide a different perspective, and as long as the posts are on-topic and reasonably civilised about it then they'll remain here. You can always report them if you think they're breaking a rule, and we'll deal with it from there.
 
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