Lewis injury won’t change list management strategy as Hawks strive to re-sign Mitchell

Hawthorn will still look to bolster its key position stocks this trade period after the injury to Mitch Lewis and development of emerging forwards.

The luckless Lewis tore the ACL in his left knee against Geelong in Round 17 in his first game back after he was sidelined for around three months with cartilage damage in the same knee.

Despite the development of first-year forward Calsher Dear, who has kicked 11 goals in nine games, and the immediate impact of Mabior Chol, whose 25 goals sits second at the club, the list management strategy will not change.

Head of football Rob McCartney says the club will seek depth in both the key forward and key defence positions, but that would have been the case even if Lewis was fit.

However, he stopped short of naming any players they might be looking at.

“I don’t think it changes,” McCartney said on SEN’s Sportsday.

“We’ve always said over the last couple of years that we know where the needs of our list build are at.

“We’ve said even with Mitch, if the opportunity arose for us to get a key forward and a key defender, we’d be in the market for both of those positions.

“So that doesn’t change. Obviously, we still would look to add a key forward to our group, but that’s not because of Mitch not being part of 2025.

“But what we have had is the surprise of Calsher Dear and his performance in this season. So we might be in a little bit better position than we were at the start of 2024 in terms of the depth of the stocks in that area of the ground, but he’ll be missed.

“Mabior (Chol) has done an outstanding job in terms of coming to his third club and making an impact more or less immediately.

“So we’ve got a little bit of depth, but we always knew that even with Mitch, we were going to be in the hunt for another key forward over this journey.”

The Hawks are also in the process of extending coach Sam Mitchell’s contract.

Mitchell, who recently moved management groups to TGI Sport with Tom Petroro, is contracted for 2025 but negotiations are underway on a new deal.

While McCartney stopped short of divulging any specific information, he did indicate that the Hawks are very keen to lock him away for the long-term.

“I’m not going to discuss the personal details of Sam’s contract,” McCartney said.

“What I will say is Sam is an outstanding senior coach and he is an important part of our future.

“I would expect that and I know that conversations are taking place, but I’m not going to say where they sit in terms of timelines.

“This is Sam’s third year and he’s done a great job at starting to get this group of payers to a point where they’re playing in games like they are on Saturday (against Collingwood), ones that count at Round 19.

“Which is what we want. We want to get back into that position that this footy club has grown accustomed to and that’s getting to play in September and also play late in September.”

Mitchell has helped the Hawks recover from a 0-5 start to sit 13th with a 9-8 record ahead of Saturday’s crunch clash with 12th-placed Collingwood at the MCG.