AFL 2025 opening round LIVE updates: Sydney Swans, Hawthorn Hawks begin AFL season with SCG clash

Given he’s proving himself and doing things his way, coach Sam Mitchell is hardly about to pay heed to expectations outside Hawthorn.

The Hawks start the season as one of the AFL’s most exciting and talked-about teams, having lasy year returned to the finals for the first time since 2018.

His players dubbed their aggressive style of play “HokBall” and, after a 0-5 start, it propelled them all the way to a narrow semi-final loss.

One of the major questions for this season, which opens on Friday night when Sydney host Hawthorn at the SCG, is whether the Hawks are the real deal.

Entering his fourth year as coach, Mitchell wryly recalls the prophecies of doom when Hawthorn finished well down the ladder in 2022 and ’23.

“Expectation is a funny thing – if you get caught up or start talking about inside, you can get off-track,” he said.

“A couple of years ago, we’d gutted the list and we were tanking – we didn’t listen to the outside world when that was the narrative.

“It would be a bit hypocritical of us now, really, to talk about ,‘This is what the world thinks, this is what we should do’.

“Every coach would be the same – you listen to your internal expectations. If you live up to that, the outside world will handle itself.”

But for all Hawthorn’s confidence, and the inclusion of big-name recruits Tom Barrass and Josh Battle to bolster their defence, Mitchell acknowledges no-one quite knows what is coming.

Given Sydney’s lengthy casualty list, topped by Errol Gulden and Callum Mills, the Hawks will start favourites on Friday night.

With new coach Dean Cox in charge, and coming off last year’s grand final humiliation, the Swans are hard to assess.

“Every team is a bit of a unknown into a new season. Obviously they’ve had a coaching handover, but Coxy has been there for a long time,” Mitchell said.

“I worked with Coxy for a year over in the west. He’s a really professional operator.

“The majority of preparation for just about every team is what you’ve worked on as an club … making sure you can put forward your best foot.

“Hopefully they’re asking questions of us as well.”

Cyclone Alfred, and the cancellation of the two Queensland games, means Friday night now opens the AFL’s round zero in the northern states.

Sydney’s mid-year rookie draft recruit Tom Hanily will make his AFL debut, while former St Kilda defender Ben Paton will play his first game for the Swans.

As Barrass and Battle start life as Hawks, one of their main assignments will be Sydney key position player Tom McCartin, who impressed in the pre-season when he was switched from defence to attack.

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There is a lot of attention around the raft of new AFL-themed TV shows this season along with the boost to the commentary teams for both Fox Footy and Seven.

Nick Riewoldt is among the AFL figures joining the fray as a TV pundit, with Seven, but he isn’t trying to take things too seriously when talking about his competitors.

“Some of it I find quite fun and good-natured banter between networks; some of it I find a bit juvenile. Like, c’mon, we’re talking about footy,” Riewoldt said during an appearance on Triple M’s Mick in the Morning show on Friday.