“We’ve let that evolve organically,which has been really positive.
McEvoy said he contemplated a handover,but ultimately he said he was ready to lead his teammates again in 2022.
“I certainly thought about it,” he said.
“Obviously so much has changed. ‘Clarko’ was here for 17 years and Sam’s taken over and put his stamp on a lot of things,which is great.
“From the start I said I had no ego attached to this position,so I was really open. But Sam took his time to feel his way around it and sit back and look and see what he thought. I’m really big on whoever’s best for the job doing it,but I certainly feel comfortable I’m in a really good space to lead these boys for this year.”
Mitchell said Hawks fans could expect to see his side play a tough brand of football,focusing less this pre-season on the opposition and more so on his own team’s style.
“We’re really trying to find our own identity as a club,” he said.
“Some parts of our game have been really strong,and we try to stick to those,and some other parts of our game we need to improve.
“We’re still working out some of the finer details,but we’re starting to do some match play and find our way with the way we want to play the game. We think it’ll be an exciting brand,a tough brand of footy.
“We’d like to be consistently a tough and hard side,we’d like to be physical. If you look across any sport,the real competitive teams that have that bit of a nasty edge about them have seen to be successful for long periods of time. ”
And Mitchell said McEvoy was likely to spend more time in attack than defence in 2022.
“He’s been spending a lot of time in the front half as a key forward,obviously spending a lot of time in the ruck,and we know we can throw him down back if we need to,” he said.
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