AS captain of a fledgling side on the newer end of the AFL Women’s scale, Hawthorn’s captain Tilly Lucas-Rodd has growth on their mind ahead of 2023.

After an up and down debut season in the competition, Lucas-Rodd said that Hawthorn’s ultimate goal is to continue to build on what the Hawks achieved in Season 7.

“I think every club just wants to grow and build, and especially being such a young group and still only in its second season we are just in that in that growth stage,” they said. “We still want to challenge teams, like don’t get me wrong we want to win.

“That’s always an objective is to win as many games as possible and to be competitive but within that we want to see growth as a team, growth in our game plan and growth in individual players so that’s the main thing.”

Although the Hawks only got a few wins on the board in their debut season, Lucas-Rodd was still pleased with how Season 7 turned out.

“We did have a few wins but also towards the back end we had a few close losses too so we were showing that with time and playing together we really gel” Lucas-Rodd noted.

“I was really quite positive at the end of the season. We didn’t probably get as many wins as we would have liked, but we showed that our brand of footy can match it with a few wins and close losses. So yes our brand does work, just having it sustaining it for four quarters and sustaining it across the season is a big thing for us.”

Moving into 2023, and Lucas-Rodd said that this preseason had gone very well for those at Waverley Park.

“I think coming into the second year of doing it, it’s much nicer because you have that culture and those connections, so you can kind of focus on the footy and I think a lot of us had big off seasons so we worked really hard in terms of we were in the club a lot, making sure we were getting bigger, stronger, faster, more skills so it was nice to easily transition into preseason,” they said.

Reflecting on the stark contrast between her two preseasons in brown and gold, Lucas-Rodd agreed that they were “completely different”.

“That first year you’re just trying to find your feet and gel a whole bunch of players together,” Lucas-Rodd said. “Thirty people coming from all different walks of life trying to gel them together and also create a game plan and have that be successful is a huge ask on a football club.

“This one has been I think it’s felt a lot more structured and more calculated and I think as a playing group we’ve really got lots out of it that the coaches wanted us to and also having new personnel like Batesy and Greta have been incredible and have changed the way preseason is going.”

Lucas-Rodd and the Hawks picked up some big name new teammates in the offseason, namely former Lions duo Emily Bates and Greta Bodey, and soccer star Casey Dumont.

Lucas-Rodd said that the inclusion of Bates and Bodey into the group had been really positive.

“Well done to the list management and the Hawthorn Football Club staff in getting those two in because they’re some big names in Batesy and Bodey,” they said. “They’ve both been incredible in driving high performance standards and they know what it takes not just in AFLW but to be successful in it and I think what they’ve brought is invaluable in that sense in how to have sustained success at this level.”

Meanwhile the Hawks’ skipper praised Dumont’s willingness to learn a lot in her first foray into a new code.

“Casey’s incredible in terms of I think I’ve never seen someone seek feedback and want to learn so much, she’ll take anything you give her,” Lucas-Rodd said.

“Even I was thinking back to the praccy game on the weekend [against Melbourne] she’s asking questions in live play, trying to just soak up as much as she can and she wants to be challenged and she wants to ask questions which is incredible and I think that is probably a big teaching to the players is that this is how you get better and this this is the things you need to do to learn and grow and I think she’s settled in really well. She’s obviously just learning the game, and that’s her big thing is learning the game at the moment.”

Hawthorn gets its campaign underway this weekend with a second consecutive Round 1 matchup against Essendon on Saturday night.