From the Pocket: Hawthorn are on the right path while rubbing plenty up the wrong way

Hawthorn have climbed to the brink of the AFL top eight as coach Sam Mitchell allows his side to play with youthful exuberance. Connor Macdonald celebrates a goal at the MCG. Photograph: Graham Denholm/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

In pissing rain on Saturday, the young Hawks, several of them shorter than the Auskickers, were gambolling about in the warmup – posing for selfies, piggybacking one another, practising their celebrations. This wasn’t the Hawthorn I grew up with. This wasn’t the Hawthorn of John Kennedy Sr, the Hawthorn that Alastair Clarkson tapped into – conservative, uncompromising, utterly contemptuous of mediocrity and individualism.

“Fit in or fuck off,” Clarkson told Josh Gibson, who was partial to the envelope openings and the Portsea Polo. “Leave the carry-on to clowns,” he told others.