Outgoing Sydney Swans Chief Executive Officer Andrew Ireland said trading midfielder Tom Mitchell to Hawthorn was a tough but considered decision.

Mitchell left the Swans after 65 games at the end of the 2016 season in search of new opportunities.

Ireland revealed the decision to let Mitchell go was due to intense interest from rival clubs in a trio of young talent on the Swans list at the time.

“In the end the reality is, as with all clubs, you start to fill up your cap,” Ireland said.

“People often reflect on it and think is it because we were paying Lance too much, but the reality is we got caught in a position where it was making a decision around Tom, Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills.

“North Melbourne came really strongly to try and secure Isaac and the reality is we had to pay more than you would normally think you would pay a player coming into his fourth year.

“Isaac has played up to the level that we have paid, but in the end as Gill famously once said, you can’t have everything.”

Ireland said the Club always knew Mitchell would be a quality AFL footballer from the moment he joined the Swans.

“We made a huge commitment to him when he came onto our list originally through the father/son rules,” Ireland said.

“The Giants made a huge multi-million dollar offer to him and we had to go close to matching that to be able to get him onto our list, so he was exceptionally well paid during the early years with us. 

“We would have only done that because we thought he was going to be a very good player.”

See the full interview with outgoing CEO Andrew Ireland and award winning journalist Mike Sheahan on SwansTV.