Stephen Silvagni admits he made too many list changes when he first took the reins at Carlton at the end of 2015.
The Blues entered a deep rebuild following the end of a turbulent Mick Malthouse era, with Brendon Bolton brought in as coach and Silvagni as head of recruiting and list management.
That rebuild is still being felt in 2022. The club has not played finals since 2013.
In Silvagni’s first off-season, Chris Judd, Andrew Carrazzo and David Ellard retired and Lachie Henderson, Chris Yarran, Tom Bell and Troy Menzel were traded. Andrew Walker and Michael Jamison would then retire during the season.
On top of that, the club delisted Robert Warnock, Nick Holman, Matthew Watson, Cameron Giles, Blaine Johnson, Fraser Russell, Brad Walsh and Tom Fields.
The 15 list changes were followed up with another 12 the following year, completely gutting the squad.
Speaking on Hawthorn’s recent trade period, where Jack Gunston, Jaeger O’Meara and Tom Mitchell departed, on top of Ben McEvoy and Liam Shiels retiring and the delisting of Tom Phillips, Kyle Hartigan, Daniel Howe, Jackson Callow, Connor Downie and Jack Saunders, Silvagni said cutting too deep can build up pressure on the senior coach quickly.
“It’s going to be interesting the next few years in terms of what (Hawthorn’s) performance is going to be like,” Silvagni told AFL Trade Radio.
“I’ve been in the situation at Carlton when I first got to Carlton, we probably cut the list too deep.
“I can (see that now). It probably wasn’t fair on the coach at the time Brendon Bolton.
“We really relied on not getting a lot of injuries and we got one or two injuries to our older players and it really affected our performance on the field.”
Silvagni believes Hawthorn has set themselves up for a bottom four finish.
“I think this has been driven by Sam Mitchell. Obviously they’re happy to go into a season knowing it is a development season for them,” he said.
“Really what the Hawthorn fans will be looking for is effort and effort is the thing they’ll have to gauge their performance on because the way they’re cutting their list, I can’t see them finishing higher than 14th-15th.”
Mitchell released a statement to Hawks members last week, saying they were aiming to build a premiership list – which would require some short-term pain.