Ryan Burton was thrown in the deep but emerged as Hawthorn’s accidental defender

HAWTHORN’S Ryan Burton was recruited as a forward but through necessity he was transformed into a rebounding defender and has become a key part of the club’s rebirth.

THEY were big shoes to fill, but Ryan Burton wasn’t swimming in them.

First, Grant Birchall copped a fractured jaw in Round 3 then a knee injury in Round 8. Then James Frawley (toe) and Ben Stratton (knee) both went down in Round 9.

In the space of a fortnight last year, almost 600 games of AFL experience and eight premierships simply vanished from Hawthorn’s starting 22.

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Burton, a South Australian kid recruited as a forward a little more than 12 months earlier was assigned the defensive act impossible to follow.

This was a youngster who had slid down the 2015 draft order because his broken leg was so horrific his surgeon said the bone was “not in fragments, it was in dust”.

But after being overlooked in last year’s season-opener, Burton won the Rising Star nomination the next week and played every game up until Round 23 in a consistently composed campaign.

Chucked in the deep end, the versatile tall swam to a fourth-place finish in the best-and-fairest.

Ryan Burton’s move to defence last season was unexpected. Picture: Getty Images

Cool and composed on the field, the quietly-spoken 21-year-old is no different off it.

And as we sat outside a Hawthorn cafe beneath a huge mural with his face on it, it was easy to see how Hawthorn had quickly developed so much faith in him.

So much so that he has been earmarked as a future leader and was bestowed with club great Sam Mitchell’s No.5 jumper.

“I’m not the kind of person to put my hand up to say I’ll do this stuff ... but I’m happy to. It’s a bit different — my big head on the side of a building,” Burton smiled.

“I feel like the club has put me up for a few things like this. In terms of leading the club it’s not something that’s at the forefront of my mind or anything. I just try and do my role on the weekend and help out wherever I can during the week.

“At the moment I’m still trying to cement my spot.”

That’s modesty, for Burton’s spot is so cemented it may as well be the Bolte Bridge.

Touted in early 2015 as a potential No.1 pick, Burton’s knee injury and subsequent slip from prominence meant he arrived via pick 19 to a Hawks side fresh from three consecutive premierships.

Injury and team’s strength meant his debut was delayed, but Burton has spent the first two years of his career nurtured by excellence — Luke Hodge, Josh Gibson, Jordan Lewis, Jarryd Roughead, Mitchell and on it goes.

“It helped me in a way, because at another club I would have been their first pick or second pick and thrown straight in and I would have needed to play straight away and adopt a big role,” he said.

“But Hawthorn didn’t need that. They had no holes to fill and they just took their time with me, which was probably the best thing.

“That’s the way I’ve been thinking about it lately. It’s the best possible result I feel could have happened in the draft. If you asked, ‘Do you want to go No.1 somewhere else or No.19 to Hawthorn?’ looking back on it now I would have chosen Hawthorn every day.”

Ryan Burton is one of the faces if Hawthorn’s 2018 membership campaign. Picture: David Caird

A glut of premiership stars has since moved on. Combine that with last year’s 12th-placed finish sprinkled with a few previously unheard of thrashings and 17 players turned over in the past two years, and the critics have the recipe for the word “rebuild”.

But Burton isn’t having it.

“I don’t think anyone within our four walls thinks like that at all,” he said.

Burton knows Alastair Clarkson and his club have been here before. Hawthorn’s longest-serving coach built from the ground up in 2005, rejuvenated after 2009, and Burton and his generation next teammates are pivotal to doing it again.

“We’re pretty tight,” Burton said.

“The likes of (James) Sicily, (Blake) Hardwick, myself and the other young boys are all pretty close because there was that big gap from the players in the three premiership years and then that little drop to the younger guys.

“But most of the older premiership players have left. There’s only a handful still here and the side this year has jelled so much better and so much closer than I’ve ever seen at a football club.

“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on that. ‘Rough’ (captain Jarryd Roughead) has done a lot of off-field stuff trying to bring the team together and ‘Clarko’ talks about this family club and bringing everyone together.

“Hodgey and Roughie; it’s been a different sort of captaincy each has run. Hodgey had a lot of good players and a successful era and Rough’s had to take on a young list.

“To him, it’s building younger players up to the level he knows you have to be at. Off-field he’s brought the group a lot closer because there’s a lot more numbers playing than there was in 2013-14-15.”

Burton was a junior midfielder whose growth spurt made him a teenage forward, before necessity transformed him into a rebounding AFL defender.

Burton finished fourth in the Hawks’ best and fairest last year. Picture: Getty Images

Now an athletic 191cm and 91kg, he can play on talls and smalls, while his speed and agility make him a dangerous springboard for Clarkson’s side.

“Clarko feels I’m more comfortable down back at this stage of my career and so do I,” he said.

But you can’t help but feel a roaming midfielder role, where he can drift forward to pose aerial threats or push back to intercept dangerous opposition forays, is Burton’s destiny.

There wouldn’t be too many players in the competition who could play on Adelaide skipper Taylor “Tex” Walker one week and in the midfield the next, but Burton doesn’t discount it.

“I feel like now I’ve put on the weight, I’m strong and pretty powerful in my movement, the midfield is definitely a spot I could play,” he said.“If I can start getting my hands on the ball more, be comfortable with the ball in hand and the club feels the same, then maybe a position might open up or the club might want to try something new.”

That team success he so often hears about at Hawthorn is what fills him with envy and motivation in equal measure.

“I guess I train and play around four-time premiership players and three-time premiership players and the stories that come out of Grand Finals are often there,” he said.

“They always talk about how they’re always going to be premiership players.

“Some have got their reunion this year for 2008. It’s a bond you share for the rest of your lives.

“I didn’t win a lot of premierships growing up. There were a few Tuesday night school ones out in Norwood. They weren’t huge.

“If I finished my career on less than 100 games having won a few flags, I’d be happier than playing 300 and winning none.”

Tickets for the 2018 season go on-sale Monday morning at 9am for Hawthorn members and Wednesday 9am for the general public.