‘Old-school’: Coach’s retort to Hodge criticism

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell understands the source of Luke Hodge’s frustration with Jack Ginnivan but has brushed off the Hawks great’s criticism of his behaviour as “old-school”.

Mitchell’s four-time premiership teammate called on the coach and senior Hawthorn players to pull Ginnivan back into line on Tuesday after his controversial “see you next week” Instagram comment directed at Sydney ruckman Brodie Grundy.

Hodge said the comment had overstepped a line and would increase Port Adelaide’s motivation to perform against its semi-final opponent.

“What you do is you send banter in a text message, you don’t put it out in the open for Port Adelaide to sit there and go ‘Let’s use this and get stuck into Ginnivan’,” Hodge told SEN on Tuesday.

“You don’t want to go give anything to an opponent to try and make them come out any more pumped up.”

Asked what he thought of the criticism, Mitchell said on Wednesday he would not have expected the Power to need any extra motivation ahead of the Friday night clash.

“Our players, a lot of them don’t have each other’s phone numbers – in my world, you send each other a text,” he said.

“They don’t do that, that’s not how they communicate. They send it via Snapchat, or TikTok, who knows what else they do?

“The way the world operates in that realm is not my expertise … Hodgey is obviously from my old-school days. I heard his comments, and I know he’s just trying to spur on the Hawks as he goes for us this week.

“I think Port Adelaide have got their season on the line, the same way we do … I think both teams are going to be as highly motivated as you could possibly hope for.”

Mitchell said he was “a little bit torn” on how to replace injured fullback Sam Frost, but by Wednesday afternoon the Hawks had confirmed nine-gamer Jai Serong would take his spot in defence.

Serong, who is the younger brother of Fremantle star Caleb, stayed back for a lengthy conversation with backline coach Kade Simpson on the boundary line at the end of the session.

Hawthorn football boss Rob McCartney said the 193cm third-year defender would be able to “showcase his weapons” after receiving the nod ahead of SSP recruit Ethan Phillips.

“While it is disappointing for Sam (Frost) to miss Friday night’s game, we know Jai has been knocking on the door for a number of weeks now with his fantastic form in the VFL,” McCartney said.

“It’s pleasing to see him get another opportunity to showcase his weapons at the AFL level and we know he will take it with both hands.

Mitchell said Josh Ward’s 22-disposal, five-clearance performance as a centre-bounce midfielder in the win over the Bulldogs gave him great faith in any reserve player the Hawks called in.

“Last week he took (his chance), and that gives us great confidence the development programs that we have in place are working really well,” Mitchell said.

It’s not just (Ward) – Finn Maginness, Harry Morrison, those guys have played a lot of VFL footy, and that gives me confidence for the Frosty replacement that whoever takes that spot will have been in good form, will have played a lot of VFL footy, and there’s a lot of evidence that you can perform well in your first game in.”