In pissing rain on Saturday, the young Hawks, several of them shorter than the Auskickers, were gambolling about in the warmup – posing for selfies, piggybacking one another, practising their celebrations. This wasn’t the Hawthorn I grew up with. This wasn’t the Hawthorn of John Kennedy Sr, the Hawthorn that Alastair Clarkson tapped into – conservative, uncompromising, utterly contemptuous of mediocrity and individualism.

“Fit in or fuck off,” Clarkson told Josh Gibson, who was partial to the envelope openings and the Portsea Polo. “Leave the carry-on to clowns,” he told others.

Back in the day, one of the Hawks’ great onball line-ups – Don Scott, Leigh Matthews and Michael Tuck – barely spoke a word to one another all year. Now the young Hawks speak of their love and connection. They have wacky celebrations that rub plenty up the wrong way. They present as lightly and as loosely as Collingwood did in the first two years of coach Craig McRae’s tenure.

For many who played with and know Sam Mitchell well, they always knew he’d be a successful coach. The only question mark was whether he’d be able to connect with the younger generation, a generation that doesn’t respond well to dictators and lunatics. “His greatest challenge was – could he connect with the group emotionally?” Jordan Lewis said on Monday night.

Mitchell writes in his book how all the dominant figures at the club – Clarkson, Jeff Kennett, Luke Hodge, Lewis and himself, were all alpha male types. They could all be abrasive, and utterly myopic. They were insatiable for more success. Mitchell had just won three flags on the trot, and was asked which was the best. “The next one,” he said. The title of Mitchell’s book was Relentless and if Clarkson ever writes one, he’ll probably opt for something similar.

But Mitchell was never one of the boys, and never one to tolerate the kind of antics we now see from his players. He was always a bit different from your stereotypical footballer. All through his playing career, he would read several chapters of the Bible before games. On interstate trips, he often had hotel concierges bring up a copy.

Football was never easy for him. It only meant something to him when there was a struggle, when there was someone to prove wrong, when he was doing it his way – a different way. But as a coach, he’s had to soften that. He’s needed patience. He’s needed nerve. He’s needed a club that’s totally aligned, that’s unequivocally had his back, that wouldn’t jump at shadows, that wouldn’t implode, that wouldn’t have Kennett writing incoherent tweets every time they lost a few games in a row. He’s needed a supporter base that was fully on board with what he was doing, that could see the plan playing out, that was prepared to ride the bumps. It helped, in Mitchell’s case, that they’d seen him play for more than a decade. They knew his quirks, his smarts, his stubbornness, his ambition, his brilliance.

Mitchell came in with a plan, a timeline and no Jeff. His team have been handed all the worst time slots. They’ve had some dire losses. They’ve had a senior journalist, on the AFL’s dime mind you, insisting they were tanking. But they get better by the week. They come with a certain swagger. They made the Magpies look old and tired on Saturday. It was one of the few times in recent years, apart from Dusty’s 300th, that they had a game with serious weight and a bumper crowd.

The past is always present at Hawthorn. The players walk past Kennedy’s statue every day at training. There’s always another premiership reunion, another hall of fame inductee, another former champion in the media. But Mitchell has carefully selected and fast-tracked a very modern team – a mix of private schoolboys and South Sudanese refugees; of wizards and workhorses. As a footballer, he waited, he watched and he pounced. As a coach, ever since Kennett’s shambolic press conference announcing the handover, he’s been playing the long game.

But he’s also changed – less rigid, more willing to relinquish control, and more tolerant of the kind of carry-on that was once anathema to him. As a result, his team may be ready to contend quicker than even he anticipated.

• This is an extract from Guardian Australia’s free weekly AFL email, From the Pocket. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions