How hard was it to get the team up and running this year after such a taxing finals series last year?
We didn’t find that our players lacked any motivation over summer. They were eager to get back into it again and attack the season. The biggest hurdle we had to overcome was the limited preparation some of our players had going in to round one. It was very foreign for us. We didn’t have the same length of time preparation. What was compounding that was the amount of guys who had surgery post-2008 and that affected the preparation of many of our players. You try to get by but there is no doubt that restricted our players’ output throughout the year.

Has the club made sure to get all operations done quickly so that they can have uninterrupted pre-seasons?
We did last years’ surgery as soon as we possibly could. Some of the injuries were mishaps in the pre-season. Jordan Lewis and Luke Hodge both hurt their shoulders in training incidents during the pre-season that led them to have surgery and miss the bulk of the pre-season. We always try to get our surgeries done as soon as possible. The big difference this time was that we did those surgeries at the end of August whereas last year it was happening in the first two weeks of October. That is a pretty big time difference.

How does the team get back in the finals next year?
The greatest thing is to get ourselves a healthy list again. We feel that despite the disappointment of the season in terms of results and ladder position, we’ve been able to blood a lot of young players and give them the opportunity to play at the level. We debuted seven players in a season that was coming off the back of a premiership, which is quite extraordinary.

To have the youngest list in the competition after a premiership is quite unusual as well. We set up our list knowing the drafts coming up were going to be significantly compromised with the Gold Coast and West Sydney coming in. We drafted three 17-year-olds to the club in (Shane) Savage, (Liam) Shiels and (Luke) Lowden last year. Two of those boys were able to play senior footy this year together with (Ryan) Schoenmakers and (Brendan) Whitecross, and some of these other lads who played some pivotal roles for us. We think that will only help us going forward and, with the return of (Clinton) Young, (Rick) Ladson, (Stephen) Gilham and hopefully (Trent) Croad, we can hopefully return bigger and stronger.

Is Clinton Young’s career in doubt?
From our point of view, he’s had groin surgery that will hopefully correct his problem. It isn’t too much different to a lot of other players who have had a very similar injury. It’s a common operation these days and we’re anticipating he will make a full recovery from that injury and will be up and running. Shaun Burgoyne has also had knee injury and we expect both those boys to be up and going in December.

A lot of young players went on to play finals at Box Hill. How important is that for their development?
Brendan Bolton did a magnificent job with the Box Hill guys. They hadn’t played finals footy for four or five years and Brendan came in and gave the club a real professional outlook on how they should go about their footy. A lot of our young players benefitted from being able to go through a finals series. The Box Hill seconds won the flag and the senior side progressed two weeks into the finals. Hopefully that exposure to VFL finals will help them with their footy and to step up into senior AFL footy in the years ahead.

Who can we expect to see step up next year?
We don’t want to put a ceiling on any individual player. We expect improvement from every player on our list, not just the young ones. Every player who has come into our club over the last 12 months to two years, we expect to step up and be given the chance to play senior footy. The guys we are looking to add value to our senior group in 2010 are the guys who got to play a fair amount of senior footy in 2009 and on the back of a really good pre-season campaign really acquit themselves well for 2010.

Stuart Dew’s time at Hawthorn was only brief. How would you rate his contribution?
It was a real pinch-hitting role that Dewey played. It was a little bit unfulfilled in one sense. I was hoping it would be a three-year project with Dewey but it wasn’t to be. His body this year really failed him as we tried to step up his program.

In the first year we knew he was going to be a pinch-hitting player off the interchange as we tried to get him fit. We stepped up his demands this year and it showed he was unable to withstand the rigours of a more intensified training program. That cost him in terms of his preparation for games this year. At the end of the day it was too tiring to try and battle the constant soft-tissue injuries.

In our view he retired 12 months prematurely but at least he got two years at our footy club. At least he’s come back and helped Hawthorn win a flag which is terrific but also to get himself to 200 games and win a premiership at two separate clubs, it has been a great adventure for him.

You have four extra weeks of pre-season this year. What will you do differently this time around?
It sounds very simplistic but hopefully we can just have players on the park. In the space of 10 months we had over half of our players requiring surgery and that is a significant disruption in any football team let alone an AFL club. If we are able to keep our guys on the park we think that there will be more numbers on the track, greater demand for positions, greater demand for spots and that will hopefully drive results a little further in 2010.

Is a premiership in 2010 a real possibility?
We are of the view we need to put ourselves in a position where we’ve got a really strong base and we will make those judgments as we go through. We think a fit and healthy list, and the addition of Burgoyne and (Josh) Gibson in positions we felt we needed to improve, will help our breakaway leg speed in the middle of the ground - as well as have a guy like Gibson who can play on a strong tall opposition forward. We feel our side is better structured going in to 2010 than it was in 2009, but only time will tell. So much of it depends on a really solid and sturdy pre-season campaign and we feel really confident that our players are well positioned to deliver that.

Trent Croad and Max Bailey have had significant injury problems. Are you confident they are going to play again?
As confident as we can be. Max has had his third ACL but it’s his other knee this time and we have to treat the injury in isolation from his other two mishaps on the other knee. The lad is still only 21, 22 years of age. We hold high hopes he will be an important player for us and we are confident he will recover strongly from this surgery.

As for Croady, his was a very significant injury. He is the eternal optimist and so are we all when it comes to recovery from injury. He went through a program to give himself every chance of playing this year but as he stepped it up to get to 95-100 per cent speed, his foot wouldn’t respond to the work we were trying to put into it. It was decided he would have more corrective surgery to that foot where he has had some bone fused. That is a significant procedure in itself. We need to go through a process of slowly building him up and seeing how it goes. It is quite foreign in AFL footy for a player of his size to have bones fused in his foot, so it is difficult to make predictions on when and how successful he will return. There will be no lack of trying on his behalf or our club’s to try and get him right. If we do, we consider it a significant bonus but we’ve got our fingers crossed he will get through this recovery period reasonably healthy.

What will Gibson and Burgoyne bring to the team?
Burgoyne adds that mix of class where he can play midfield, back or forward. He is very flexible in the roles he can play. He brings an exciting mix of being able to play inside and outside the contest really well. He is a proven goalkicker at the level. We think he will really add to our midfield mix.

Gibson - with his willingness to play a key role in the back half - we are really keen for him to lock down a position at centre half-back or full-back for 2010. It was a position he really liked to play. They don’t come along too often, guys that really want to play in those tough positions at centre half-back and full-back. He is one of them that was available for us to chase and we are very fortunate to get him to come to our footy club.

There are three steps to a trade. The first is that they would give consideration to leaving their club, the second step is that they would agree to the terms the new club offers them and the third is working out the strategy to get a trade going. It is very difficult to do. We’ve been unable to bring players into our club over the five year period I’ve been involved because players didn’t want to come to us because we were a poorly performed club. That is fair enough too, but now we’ve got players wanting to come because they believe the club is going to have some success and we are delighted to be able to secure those two boys. We believe they will make a pretty significant contribution to our success next year.

Campbell Brown’s name came up during trade week as a possible trade for Burgoyne. Have you spoken to him since then?
Yeah, I’ve spoken to Browny. He was an unfortunate by-product of the whole kerfuffle around trade week. We were always strong in our view that we will only trade players from our footy club who want to seek an opportunity elsewhere and Mark Williams, Josh Kennedy and Ben McGlynn were each offered three-year contracts by their respective clubs that we couldn’t match in terms of longevity or financial rewards, and in some cases with those three, we couldn’t match with playing opportunity either.

We sat down with all three of those boys and agreed together that it was probably in their best interests as footballers to explore the greater financial benefit and opportunity benefit in terms of playing and greater security. They were all no-brainers so it was pretty amicable. On the other hand Browny never wanted to leave and we never wanted him to leave in all honesty.

We were never going to march a guy out of our footy club that wanted to stay. If they could have convinced him to go and he thought it was in his best interests and he came to us and requested to go, then we would have given it consideration. When a player doesn’t want to go and the coaching staff doesn’t want him to go then I reckon you are running into disaster if you push players out of your footy club.

What did the club learn from the final game against Essendon and all the fallout?
You continue to learn that you’ve got to keep your head down and bunker down a bit more than what we do in this emotional game from time to time. They are big stakes. The winner of that game was going to qualify in finals and we had such a disastrous year in terms of not being able to get our season up and going at the level we would have liked, but we found ourselves in round 22 in a position where we could’ve got some credibility out of the season by at least qualifying to play finals.

It was an emotion-charged game. Both sides were hard at it and events unfolded as they do in games from time to time. The emotion is right at the forefront of the game and unfortunately in that particular instance, neither myself nor Jeff nor Campbell held the brand of the Hawthorn footy club in the same sort of manner in which we’ve held it in previous times. For that we’ve got some ground to make up in terms of the way we are viewed by the football community.

How’s your relationship with Jeff Kennett? Are you happy for him to speak his mind as often as he does?
He is an outstanding president. His governance and vision for our club and his handling of issues within our club, and outside as well, have been outstanding for us. What comes with getting more exposure as a premiership club is that the brand is out there a little bit more. You are liable to be judged more harshly because of your success. We know we are out there more and more for all to see. Any person following AFL and indeed Australian sport would be looking at successful teams from each given year.

Everyone now would be looking at St Kilda and Geelong as teams that really stepped it up this year, and the Western Bulldogs as well. They will be under increased scrutiny as well. We have to accept we are one of those clubs now and what comes with that is a responsibility to be level with the manner we handle the press and any issues that come up with our footy club.