HAWTHORN captain Sam Mitchell says his team’s growing maturity helped it get the four points against North Melbourne on Saturday.

The Hawks were outplayed early in the contest and again fell behind in the second half before rallying to eventually win by 16 points.

But Mitchell says where his young side might once have dropped their shoulders when trailling, some calmer, more experienced heads helped them lift in crucial stages.

“I think we probably just matured a little bit over the summer. We probably realised that games that are there to be won … we’ve probably got a little bit more belief that we’re able to win them now,” Mitchell told SEN on Monday morning.

“Perhaps in years gone by, (in) games like that where we’ve been behind for most of the day, we would have just gone down by a few goals and said ‘well, we just weren’t quite good enough today’.

“But probably the belief we have within each other in the group at the moment gives us a bit of belief to come back from a couple of goals down.”

The Hawks’ win over North was especially gutsy given the side was struggling for manpower late in the game.

Chance Bateman, Tom Murphy and Cameron Stokes were all sidelined, and Mitchell said while the AFL needn’t necessarily change its current four-man bench, it shouldn’t rule out reviewing its interchange rule should it mean preserving the well-being of players.

“People think perhaps we do it [use the interchange] purely to get fresh legs and (while) that’s one area of it, the other area is to try to prevent injuries, (and) to stop running guys into so much fatigue.

“I’m not saying that it should be changed, but it is one of the considerations that they’re going to have a look at (and) have a think about.

“The runner came out to a couple of us and said ‘Are you going to be right to the end?’, and we didn’t really have much choice, did we?”