Sam Mitchell charged into Hawthorn’s change rooms at half-time of his team’s round seven clash with Gold Coast, ruckman Lloyd Meek firmly in his sights.
An errant backwards handball by Meek in the dying stages of the second quarter had led to a crucial turnover, allowing the Suns to score a goal with four seconds left on the clock.
Mitchell, fuming, delivered an animated spray – which amateur lip-readers discerned contained a lot of f—s – that quickly went viral on social media, largely due to the wide-eyed expressions of Meek’s shocked teammates.
“I know that when he’s aggressive and he’s fired up, it’s because of how much he cares, and I’m the same,” Meek told this masthead.
“I’m exactly the same. So like, we’re all competitive people. We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t. We all want to win. And sometimes those conversations are just what it takes to get the message across.
“At the time, obviously no one likes being yelled out. But I was still so stoked with how we were able to respond and come out of that.”
Hawthorn went on to win the game by 49 points, holding Gold Coast goalless in the final term.
Meek points out there’s a lot the broadcast cameras don’t see or show. The ruckman said Mitchell checked in with him before running out for the third quarter, and again after the game, to check he was OK.
“He came up to me and said ‘well done, you responded really well’, and we had a good chat, no one sees that,” Meek said.
“You just see one 30-second snippet and think ‘geez, he’s copped a spray’. But it’s like no, we’ve actually had conversations all day.”
Growing up in Mininera in regional Victoria – Meek hails from a prestigious rowing family, with his dad and his siblings all winning Head of the Lake titles. He was selected by Fremantle with pick 69 in the 2017 draft, but did not debut in the AFL until his fourth season at the Dockers. He later moved to Hawthorn during the 2022 trade period to seek more opportunities in the ruck.
As an example of Mitchell’s close connection to his players, Meek revealed the coach delivered handwritten letters to each of them before their qualifying final win, on the road, against Fremantle.
“[In the letter] he mentioned that he was glad that I picked Hawthorn and had faith in me, and how we’ve both, I guess, grown over that four-year period,” Meek said.
Meek said he found it difficult to fully articulate what Mitchell meant to the playing group, heralding the head coach as someone who “makes every single person feels valuable”.
“He [Mitchell] is Hawthorn,” he said.
“He’s so pivotal and so important to what we’ve built … not discrediting the[other] people; the board and the football club and the other coaches and staff, but he has built so much of the environment that we get to come in and enjoy every day, and that’s probably been something that I have valued and appreciated since coming to Hawthorn. ”
“Everything he spoke about and his vision for us and the club was so aligned with what I wanted in my career.”
Meek has endless praise for Mitchell’s coaching abilities, but has some doubts about the coach’s prowess at chess. Mitchell and a few other Hawthorn players regularly play chess online, with the head coach known to have a solid winning streak.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever played [against] him, but I reckon I’d be able to beat him,” Meek joked.
“I think he likes to play on chess.com, so I think he’s pretty handy. He probably uses AI to cheat.”
Hawthorn’s preliminary final clash with Brisbane on Saturday comes six weeks after the back-to-back reigning premiers took them to the cleaners in round 22, the Lions storming to a 67-point win at the Gabba.
After the thumping loss Mitchell remarked, “we’re better than that, and we’re going to have to prove it”.
When he spoke to this masthead this week, Meek was yet to watch footage of the Lions’ semi-final victory over Adelaide because the game clashed with his 10-year-high school reunion in Ballarat; an event the 28-year-old attended alongside his childhood sweetheart, now wife, Elonie, who he met in Year Nine.
Ahead of the prelim, Meek intended to keep things simple.
“I am very big on my rituals. I like having my routine. Yeah, I like to think I’m not too superstitious, but I do find comfort in doing similar things,” he said.
“In big games, the tendency is you want to think about it more, but you can’t really change what you do out there until you get out there.”
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