HAWTHORN midfielder Sam Mitchell says he won't be dwelling too much on his 100 AFL game milestone against Adelaide on the weekend but he can't help but give a brief thought to the people who told him he'd never make it.

"When you have a lot of doubters early in your career it's nice when you reach a milestone and can say, 'look what I've been able to achieve'," Mitchell says.

"If you rely on things like (milestones) that to get you motivated you probably wouldn't get to a hundred games.

"When someone tells you, you can't do something, it's only human nature to want to try and prove them wrong. I guess I've got as much of that in me as the next person."

But rather than dwell on his own achievements, Mitchell prefers to direct his thoughts to the outstanding achievements of his team so far this season.

Even then, he doesn't subscribe to the popular view that the Hawks' win over Collingwood at the weekend somehow proves that they are genuine contenders for Premiership success this year. The 24-year-old says he's been in the game long enough not to listen to media diagnoses.

"After the Sydney game everyone said that we're not hard enough and we're pretenders and then after the game against Collingwood, everyone was saying that we're the real deal.

"So depending on what happens this week is what they'll say about us for next week," Mitchell says.

He adopts the same attitude towards constant media speculation regarding who will eventually succeed Richie Vandenberg as Hawthorn captain. He's used to seeing double page spreads pitting his attributes against that of his team mate Luke Hodge, Vandenberg's other likely successor.

"We don't worry about that stuff at the club. Vanders is doing a very good job and when the time comes for a new captain there's a process in place that goes about choosing another.

"When it's time for that process to come into play we've got confidence in the system that it'll choose the right man for the job at the time.

"If I'm the best person to take the footy club forward then it would be an honour to do that. Regardless of whether that's me or Luke or someone else, they'll have the support of everyone in the footy club just like Vanders does at the moment," Mitchell says.

One of the attributes synonomous with Sam Mitchell's name when talk of the captaincy surfaces, is his clean cut image. It's a trait that is becoming more and more valued in an environment where scrutiny of players' off field behaviour is at an all time high.

"It's something that has hung around me a bit throughout my career thus far but I guess you're only ever one slip up or one time being in the wrong place at the wrong time to having that reputation tarnished.

"We work pretty hard at the Hawthorn Football Club to keep our image very clean. We're a family club, as they say, and we try and behave ourselves as much as we can."

This season the Hawks have been in the headlines for all the right reasons. Mitchell admits that going into round 14 in second place is a nice situation for his side.

"I guess at this time we've jumped up a few rungs on what some people thought we were going to be capable of this year. It feels like everything is starting to gel together but it's a long process.

"We've got belief in what we're trying to do and the system that we've put in place over the last couple of years to try and take us to our 10^th premiership," Mitchell says.

And although he won't discuss a time frame for when that flag will come (let alone the prospect of finals this year) spending last September traveling around Europe and watching the Grand Final in Las Vegas has made him yearn to have football commitments in Melbourne this September.

"You could ask anyone involved at any level of football about where they'd like to be on the last Saturday in September and I think the answer would be unanimous.

"So far in my career it's been a regret that we haven't been able to play any finals footy but we can't count our chickens before they hatch.

"We still have to go about winning each game. We're probably going to need to win about 13 games this year to play in finals.

"I'd love to have to be around Melbourne in September because as far as my career's gone so far that hasn't been the case."