Emma Race: Do you love the Hawthorn Football Club or do you love just the men's team?' Hawks Insiders Live event - 2024

28 August 2024, Glenferrie Hotel, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

The Hawks Insiders hosted af series of panels at a live event in August including an AFLW panel which featured Lucy Race, Julia Faragher and Hawthorn’s #1 ticket holder Emma Race.

As part of the AFLW panel Emma was asked about the significance of the 2024 season for the team and supporters. Her answer was proud and passionate and evoked rousing applause from the packed audience of predominantly male fans.

As the Hawthorn AFLW team storm up the ladder heading into the mid way point of the season, it presents a great opportunity to revisit Emma’s impassioned message to footy fans, that it is not too late to be early adopters of the women’s game.

I constantly see this beautiful community of Hawthorn supporters who truly are family, band together. We've been tested over times, not necessarily just on the field.

I'm a very competitive person and I see that there is an opportunity for an AFLW team to get the full support of their members in a way that hasn't really been taken up. You know, when we talk about AFLW, the Brisbane Lions have been completely dominant, a lot of the interstate clubs are incredibly dominant in the AFLW. Being a Victorian club and being one of the last to enter the competition has set us back a little bit. We've had some things that have made up the distance, but when we look at the comparison, the Brisbane Lions have been in five Grand Finals and won two of them. For Hawthorn this will be our third season in the competition yet we have about one and a half thousand more AFLW members than the Brisbane Lions.

This season, we've got an opportunity to gather our 86000 members and say, do you love the Hawthorn Football Club, or do you just love the men's team?

We've had so many panels up here celebrating Hawks people who died a very long time ago and our love for them and their commitment to the club. We are about history. We are about legacy. And we're all about loving the brown and gold, whether it's at Box Hill or whether it's at Hawthorn. The opportunity that we have in the present is to make a difference to the story of this club. To stick our flag in the soil and say to every person who loves Australian Rules Football, that this club is different because this club truly values every single person who wears the brown and gold.

We've got the opportunity to support our women's team with as much passion as we support our men's team along with our blind team, our wheelchair team. This season, that might look like getting a membership. It might look like going to your first game. It might just be logging on and watching online. The truth is this, the women's team will not succeed without our support. And the reason for that is because the AFL will hold growth of the AFLW until they see us wanting to support it.

The women only get eleven games in ten weeks to make their mark. So it's kind of like dog years really. Every game counts more than one of the men’s games. We've got to make our mark straight away, come out of the blocks flying and we have to win the first four games or we are probably not playing finals. In the same way that every game counts, every membership- it really counts. Every time you watch it, at the ground or on TV it really counts in the women's game. When you do that, more commercial partners come on board, because they see the numbers, they see the data. When that happens, more money comes into the game, more professionalism comes into game, because we can pay the players more. The people who play AFLW are literally leaving their blood sweat and tears out there and then they're also copping hate online in volumes and in hideous violent rhetoric which no one deserves. So, there's a way that we can actually make a difference.

I believe in this club. I always have.

You know, for 47 years of my life, I was a Hawthorn supporter with no W team. So what I guess I am saying is, if you had the pleasure of watching people who look like you play the game I would love you to throw your support now behind people who are playing the game who look like us.

Shane Crawford: 'Footy was fun. Sam made it fun', inducting Sam Mitchell into Hawthorn FC Hall of Fame - 2024

17 April 2024, Regency Ballroom, Melbourne, Australia

[Congrats] to all the inductees tonight, a special mention to the Chief [Jason Dunstall was announced as an AFL Legend the same week] Well done. We all thought you were already a legend. So well done Jase.

Luke Hodge, obviously not speaking about Luke, but when he first arrived the Hawthorn, we needed him to be our saviour. There was a lot of pressure on him and he was our saviour. He was incredible. So good on your Hodgey.

Allan Jeans, he once babysat my mum. He was friends with my grandma and he gave me the best advice I've ever received. I’d just started training at Hawthorn, and we finished a skills session and I went over to Mr. Jeans and I said, how did I go?' And without taking a breath, he said, 'you don't train hard enough. When the balls come out, you go flat out. Darrin Pritchard, Tony Hall, they run through the ball. You need to do that.' And I thought, shit. I thought I trained hard. So that was the best advice I've ever had. So it's great that he's been inducted as a Legend.

Sam Mitchell. Okay, I'll be nice.

Sam Mitchell has always been doubted, even when he finally got himself drafted, there were always concerns and doubts and question marks. Is his endurance good enough? Is he quick enough? Can he play on both sides of his body? Is he tall enough? (He's not very tall. He's got a long torso and short little legs and looks a little like a little ball. But, that's as mean as I'm going to go. He's a little unusual and [to Mitchell] your head's probably too big for your body anyway.)

So anyway, he was doubted. There were lots of question marks. And the great David Parkin, and I'm pumped to be sitting next to David tonight, he gave Sam some wonderful advice when he started out, he said, 'You're very good at winning the ball. Don't be good. Be great.'

And guess what? Sam took that on straight away. He went to work on his strengths and he turned himself into one of the all time greats, especially when it comes to contested footy. And you've got to remember, he was tagged every game. And that's back when taggers were able to harass you, manhandle you and abuse you. Sam took it all in his stride. So much so that there were games when we played and Sam wasn't tagged, he used to come up to me and he used to crack the shits. He was offended the opposition weren't tagging him! He actually didn't know how to play without an opponent. That's how often he was tagged.

Sam had an unbelievable appetite for the game. He worked his butt off. He was so professional. A wonderful attitude. Amazing belief. Even when times were tough, it just made him more determined. He had so much courage. Courage to put his body on the line, courage to put his head over the ball. Courage to tell you what he thought, even though his teammates didn't appreciate it a lot of the times. Sam was always grabbing the ruckman after training and doing ball-ups and throw-ins nonstop. He was working at his craft.

Every pre-season, Sam would come at the end of endurance runs in the midfield group, which was good for some of the midfielders because they knew that they probably weren't going to come last. But, I always say that if you had a football and you took on Sam Mitchell one-on-one, no matter who you are, he would win eighty out of a hundred times.

Even if he was fatigued, he'd still find a way. Mental strength. I've never seen anything like it. I loved playing with Sam. You always knew what you were going to get. He was so reliable, so consistent. He was so good. He trained so much on the opposite side of the body that the coaches had to demand that he start kicking on his good side of the body.

There was nothing better than quick discussions in the middle of the MCG after kicking a goal. And this is sort of how it went, and this was later in my career when I had retired from winning the hard ball, and we would quickly talk to the ruckman. I would be in there with Sam and we'd go, ‘Okay, this is what's going to happen. Ruckman, you hit it to Sam. Sam, you take on three or four opponents and I'll be doing a fly by at nine o'clock or three o'clock and kick the ball into the forward line.' And sure enough, Sam would beat all the opposition, I would do a fly by, I actually felt like Tom Cruise from Top Gun. The ball would be handed on a platter and I would kick the ball inside.50.

Footy was fun. Sam made it fun.

Grand final 2008. Great day. [applause] That's what I'm talking about!. It was half time. It was hot. We were all sitting in the rooms trying to catch our breath. No one was making any noise. And all we heard from Clarko's rooms, the coaches' rooms, was someone absolutely copping it like I've never heard before. Deep down I was laughing, that it wasn't me. And it just happened to be Mitch. And I do remember talking to Luke Hodge at the time saying, 'we need to get around him. We need to get him going for the second half.'  When Mitch came out of the rooms, I locked eyes on him and I said, 'that seemed to go well.'

But what did he do? He didn't put up a white flag. He put up a premiership flag. His second half was magnificent. He dominated. He got away from his tagger, Cameron Ling, the mighty Geelong player he was. He kicked a goal. He turned himself not into a premiership player, but also a premiership captain. It was incredible. And that's what Sam was all about. When the times were tough, he'd find a way. He'd just find a way.

So I'm looking forward to coming back in a few years time to induct you as a Legend, after you coach the Hawks to your very first premiership as coach. But I’m not getting ahead of myself tonight, it gives me great honour to induct the great Sam Mitchell into the Hawthorn Hall of Fame. Good on you Sam.