Hawks coach responds to Cornes’ Toby Greene suggestion

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell admits he would love Toby Greene at his club.

But he fully understands the reality of the situation in attempting to lure a star captain away from his current club.

Last week, SEN’s Kane Cornes floated the potential for the Hawks to bring 32-year-old Greene, who is out of contract at season’s end, back to Melbourne for a last tilt at a flag

He asked Mitchell about it on Friday morning’s Fireball.

“You'll continually be on the hunt to improve your list and you like to dodge these questions, but I think Toby Greene is a nice option for free in terms of not giving up anything for him - a couple of years left, I think he serves a purpose for you,” Cornes said.

“I won't ask you to specifically comment on Toby, but do you have room or would you look at more of a veteran type towards the tail-end of their career, more so than someone in their prime? Is there room for that at the Hawks?”

The Hawks have recently added established senior players in Tom Barrass and Josh Battle so looking at older stars is no bother.

And of course Mitchell would love to recruit a player of Greene’s ilk but stopped short of saying the Hawks would specifically be interested.

“Well, I love Toby Greene. I read your article and I tried to imagine him in a Hawthorn jumper, in the same way that I'm sure Adam Kingsley imagines our players in their jumpers and thinks, ‘Oh, that'd be nice’,” Mitchell said.

“We are always trying to improve our list and we wouldn't say no to too many types. A couple of years ago, we were really youth-based. Who's going to play in the next flag? Who's going to drive us to where we need to go?

“And then you get to a point when you feel like you're not too far away and you're looking for final pieces of the puzzle. We brought in Tom Barrass a couple of years ago who was nearing 30 at the time, and we knew that he wasn't going to play for 10 years, but gee, he's been important for us these last couple of games in particular.

“So you're always trying to improve your list. I think every coach is doing that and pretty open to most players at this point.”

Cornes referenced Hawthorn’s recruitment of ageing stars like Josh Gibson and Brian Lake during Mitchell’s premiership-laden time as a player.

He wonders if Mitchell could borrow that sort of inspiration by adding star power to help bring this emerging Hawks group forward.

“It depends on your strategy and where you are in the in the cycle,” he replied.

“When we were younger, so 2022, we would never have looked at Tom Barrass because we thought it's going to take a fair bit of time to rebuild. We have to get enough games into all these young guys, and we need to make sure they're playing key positions and make sure they're getting a lot of game time and exposure to the game at the highest level.

“So bringing in top-up players who are going to be potentially taking spots away from future premiership players is a difficult thing to stomach from our perspective.

“But as you as you progress you know there's parts of your list that you're really happy with and that you're quite happy to settle, and then there's parts of your list that you're trying to improve all the time.

“We need a little bit of that midfield firepower that perhaps a couple of teams have but we haven't got exactly the best in that area, so that's an area where we're continuing to look at but it's not the only one.”

Greene has been with the Giants since inception, debuting in the club’s first game back in 2012.

He’s played 265 games which has him second to Callan Ward (267) on the all-time games played list, with his 418 goals sitting second only to Jeremy Cameron (427).

It would be hard for Greene to leave the Giants but until he re-signs there could be chatter surrounding his potential next move.