Hawthorn Senior Coach Sam Mitchell says he is looking forward to seeing the brown and gold faithful out in force at his side's first MCG game of the season this Saturday.

"A lot of people will come out and see us for our first home game.. we'll do our best to put on a good show for you," Mitchell said at his press conference on Thursday. 

“I'm rapt with the response from our fans, we always feel like we have really good support at the games, last week was an Essendon home game but there was 73,000 there."

Hear more from Mitchell ahead of the Round 2 clash with Melbourne. 

On the challenge against Melbourne

"We’ve done a lot of work over the pre-season to try and give ourselves a chance to put ourselves in winnable positions more often and we were able to do that last week. It's another challenge this week against Melbourne who are obviously one of the best teams in the competition. I think as a side we need to give ourselves chances to beat good teams, so this is a fantastic opportunity for us to take one of the best teams in the competition out. We have had some decent performances against them in the last couple of years, but we just haven’t been able to put them away, so I’m really looking forward to the opportunity of playing against a quality side on a Saturday afternoon at the MCG.”

On last week's loss to Essendon

“We looked at the game last week and there was a lot of missed opportunities. We did play in a manner that gave us a chance to win and we talked in pre-season about consistency and making sure we were putting ourselves in more winnable positions and we were certainly in the that for majority of the game last week. I think the clearance battle did hurt us last week particularly on the scoreboard."

On James Sicily 

“James Sicily is one of our premier players and helps us week in and week out, I’m really glad he’s available to play this week. (In regards to last week) we have put that behind us and will just focus on what’s in front of us now. I'm really confident that he’s got all of the tools in his kit bag now to make sure he is able to perform well both on the field himself as a player, but also on the field himself as a leader. He knows that he needs to perform at his best and make sure he stays within the rules of the game.”

Watch the full press conference below.