WHEN Sam Mitchell travelled to the United States in October, the Hawthorn coach was struck by how the Ohio State Buckeyes football program incorporated artificial intelligence into everything.

It wasn't openly discussed, but it was used everywhere. And had been for some time.

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The NCAA Big Ten conference powerhouse wasn't the only place Mitchell went to see how AI is making a difference. The 43-year-old uses most off-season blocks for professional development. 

Last year he went to six other universities and organisations in the US to investigate AI benefits and is now using it not just during the week at the club but also during games. 

Most clubs across the AFL are now using AI in some form for myriad reasons, including coding, analysis, injury management, themes and even presentations. 

But after copping some public ridicule when it first emerged, Mitchell is adamant that if you're not embracing AI you will fall behind the competition because it is the way to work more efficiently in 2026. 

"Two things happened out of my comments, which I was a bit naive to, to be honest. The first one was a whole bunch of people said, 'What? What is this? How is he using this for football? This is not right'. And then a whole bunch of other people said, 'Hey, I think we can help you, have you considered this and would you like that?' Overall it was a positive because I got a couple of good leads," Mitchell told AFL.com.au on Wednesday.

"I don't love data, there are a lot of coaches that are really heavily driven by that. I see data as a means to an end, I want it to tell me the story as quickly as possible, so an example of how I would use it is if you think about the end of a quarter, you get a 10-page document and you've got to make sense of it, by the time you get to the players and you've got to figure out what out of that 10 pages you can talk to the players about that might help them win the next quarter, win the game, give us some sort of advantage.

"Having something as powerful as some of the AI models that are out now is a way that I can spend way less time looking at numbers and more time doing other parts of your coaching, which is my preferred parts. 

"A couple of them I went specifically for AI because I knew they were AI leaders. A couple were not sports, they were just businesses that I knew were a long way ahead, and I certainly learned some things there. But the thing that I didn't recognise before going was how much other teams are using. I went to Ohio State, for instance, and had a look at their football program and it was just embedded in everything that they did. They didn't talk about it. For people that have been using it for a long time, which is not us I might add, it's kind of like saying, 'oh yeah, we're big into the internet'.

"You don't really reference it like that, it just becomes a part of what you do. It's a way to build efficiency is the is the easy way to look at it. I'm not an expert. I know that it is a big part of the future, so I'm trying to stay up with it a little bit."

Hawthorn relocated from a crammed and tired Waverley Park to the state-of-the-art $113m Kennedy Community Centre in Dingley across the off-season ready for day one of the pre-season. Mitchell lived the move from the club's spiritual home Glenferrie Oval in 2006 and believes the impact of this change has been profound. 

"I was actually fortunate I was part of the Glenferrie to Waverley move as well, and you recognise that you're going from something that's got a lot of character and a lot of history and you're going into Waverley, which still had some character and some history – but not like Glenferrie – and you had to try and make it really homely and it took a little bit of time to do that. And then you have this level of professionalism that goes along with it," Mitchell said.

"Moving to here, which doesn't have a history, has been something I was mildly worried about if I was honest, right before we moved. But after being here, I actually can't believe the difference that it's made in a positive way, in almost everything. We don't have every aspect of it right just yet. It's a bit like we've moved house and we still have a couple of boxes in the corner and the art hasn't gone up and one of the couches doesn't fit properly. But there is this … oh my goodness, this house is awesome, I'm so glad we moved. 

"We've made a great call here. There's little things like 3.30pm and the players might be finished, so last year at 3.45, there's not really anyone around. Now, I'll leave at 5pm and there'll still be 10 guys in the sauna or having a swim or in the ice bath. There's a level of warmness about the whole building that makes everyone want to stay."

Waverley Park was exposed to its fair share of wind in winter, but the Kennedy Community Centre is built on a raised area, causing Mitchell and the Hawks some initial grief early in the summer. 

"The first two weeks it was front and centre of my mind, I was really worried about it, because we had six sessions and three of them were really rough and it was like, this is not sustainable. It was a very windy period in Melbourne in general. But it was worse and I was thinking, I'm not sure what's going to happen here," he said.

"But since Christmas, I would say we've had two sessions that have been mildly compromised and every other session has been no worries. So it hasn't been front of mind, but I would say the first couple of weeks was a worry."

After exiting on the penultimate weekend of 2025, Hawthorn made changes to its development team, signing Daniel Giansiracusa from Essendon to be the new head of development after the Western Bulldogs great narrowly missed out on the senior coaching vacancy at Melbourne. 

Mitchell said Giansiracusa has challenged players and coaches across the summer, leading a new department that now includes Norm Smith medallist Jason Johannisen, former Hawk David Mirra and Jason Williams from Port Adelaide. 

"Gia's been what you thought. He's got a reasonable sort of media profile. He was very well-established player. He's been a well-established assistant coach for a long time. I think we've got out of him what we thought we would and more. So he's been excellent as far as driving standards of players and seeing the game in a strategic way about how the game can be played. 

"He has certainly challenged some of our coaching methodology and we've loved having new ideas come in. He's been at a couple of really, really good programs. I think Gia's influence on the players, on a personal level, has been something that has really stood out for me. I think he's really got under the hood a couple of players, whether it's their psychology or their kicking technique or how they think about the game or their position. I think the way that he's got that insight into some of the players which will help us over time."

Hawthorn returned to finals action in 2024 for the first time in almost a decade. After reaching a semi-final they went a week deeper in 2025. Now are they ready to go all the way under Mitchell in 2026?

"As a club, that's what we aim for," he said. "Hawthorn has regularly said that we're a club that is built to win premierships, so the aim from everything that we have built from when I started has been building towards giving ourselves premiership chances.

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"We knew that would take a bit of time in those early days. We jumped up the ladder reasonably quickly in 2024. We were in a bit of a lucky hitting zone in that year and a moderate hitting zone last year. There's no promises in this game - we need to keep giving ourselves every chance. Thinking about September is not something I spend much time in February doing, to be honest."

The four-time premiership player now enters his fifth season as Hawthorn coach in a new training and administration base, with new help around him, and artificial intelligence supporting him, still hunting his first flag as a coach.