Bulldogs champion Bob Murphy has “tempered” expectations for Hawthorn, after what has been a tumultuous off-season.
After finishing in the bottom four in 2020, the Hawks have been far from stable in the off-season, with captain Ben Stratton retiring, Collingwood poaching footy boss Graham Wright, off-field issues surrounding key forward Jon Patton and most recently the retirement of Tom Scully.
Murphy believes the Hawks now have a lot of work to do to gather some momentum heading into the 2021 season.
“Last year was a pretty seismic step backwards wasn’t it?” he told SEN’s Bob and Andy.
“They’d brought in Jaeger O’Meara, Tom Mitchell, those guys, could they cheat the logic or the accepted view that you have to dip and last year was a low finish.
“Now with the summer they’ve had, you’d imagine it’s going to be a bumpy couple of seasons.”
Co-host Andy Maher agreed, but expects Hawthorn to be able to cope with a few down seasons.
“They’ll bunker in and they’ll cop that because it’s a good club and they’ll find their way through it,” he said.