Hawthorn swingman Blake Hardwick has signed a five-year contract extension with the Hawks, keeping him at the club until the end of 2029. Hardwick has had an outstanding year for the young and emerging Hawks, highlighted by a five-goal display against Port Adelaide earlier this year. “Sam (Mitchell) saw an opportunity for me to play forward; I enjoy it, and it’s refreshing to play in different parts of the field,” Hardwick told Wide World of Sports.

To be a part of that game is pretty exciting.” Hardwick on playing in Dustin Martin’s 300th game

‘Villain’ role Hawks happy to play

Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell says his players are happy to be the “villains” and spoil Dustin Martin’s 300th game on Saturday but has his fingers crossed one of his ruckmen is available to help make that happen.

Mitchell said Ned Reeves was still “standing in meetings” as he battled back spasms and with question marks over Lloyd Meek’s ankle, it could be a plan C option to take on Tigers captain Toby Nankervis at the MCG.

Hawthorn used utility Josh Weddle as a ruckman in last week’s stirring win over GWS that has Mitchell’s men on the verge of winning a fourth game in a row for the first time since 2019.

Standing in the way of that happening will be a fired-up Richmond outfit looking to celebrate a player Mitchell said was as “good a player as we’ve seen in this generation”, conceding it was hard to avoid the hype around Martin’s milestone.

“I don’t think I need to bring it up. It’s been everywhere I’ve seen,” Mitchell said on Thursday.

He’s as a good a player as we’ve seen in this generation. It’s quite a privilege to be able to play in this game as a club. We’ll do our best to play our role as a villain and spoil the party. We’re happy to play that.”

Despite moving to within just a single win of entering the top eight, and matching last year’s entire season tally of eight wins, Mitchell was loathe to talk about growing expectations for the Hawks after wins over the Giants and last year’s grand finalists Brisbane Lions in the past three weeks.

“Everyone loves their team and everyone has huge hopes and I hope Hawthorn fans have huge hopes for where we are going,” he said.

“How quickly that is, we are doing everything we can to make that as fast as possible and they can dream as big as they like. We have no control beyond Richmond this week.”