FORMER Hawthorn recruiting manager John Turnbull doesn't beat around the bush. Was Hawthorn a racist club? "There were strong undercurrents of prejudice," he says.

Turnbull, who oversaw Hawthorn's player selection from the end of 1995 to late 2003, recalls being welcomed to the Glenferrie fold by a senior figure at the club. "He said to me (pointing at his forearm): 'Good luck, John, and just remember, don't draft anyone with skin darker than mine.' "

Turnbull had previously worked at Melbourne, where he had heard a few stories about the Hawks' reluctance to draft Aboriginal players. He recalled the Demons being interested in the indigenous player David Cockatoo-Collins and he was worried that Hawthorn, which had an earlier pick, would get him first. "Don't worry," he was told by a Melbourne colleague, "Hawthorn won't pick him." They didn't.

But being confronted by such blatant prejudice personally shocked and appalled Turnbull. He takes far more pleasure in recalling how dramatically the club's attitude changed. It was the recruitment of Chance Bateman from Perth in the 1999 national draft that played a pivotal role. When the young Hawk midfielder tragically lost his young sister in a train accident, Turnbull says the Hawks were nothing but supportive, sending both he and Bateman and close teammate Bill Nicholls to the funeral. At the end of the season, in line with Bateman's wishes to return to Western Australia, they attempted to facilitate a trade with either West Coast or Fremantle.

In the end, Bateman stayed, and it has been to the benefit of the player and the club. But enlightenment had been a long time coming for the Hawks.

That said, nobody would have guessed the long-term implications of Essendon's recruitment of Michael Long from the Northern Territory at the end of 1988.

Of course, there had been gifted and successful Aboriginal players before him at league level, Geelong ruck legend Graham "Polly" Farmer, Carlton's Syd Jackson, North Melbourne handball wizard Barry Cable and the Krakouer brothers to name a few.

Yet even as the VFL became the AFL, conventional recruiting wisdom remained mired in prejudices of the past. Black players were talented but erratic. Difficult to handle. Vulnerable under pressure. Unreliable on the big occasion.

Long's immediate impact on Essendon with his dash, skill and courage seemed to change the mindset quickly, indigenous players became commonplace at most clubs, and those hoary old chestnuts were duly smashed.

Long won a Norm Smith Medal five days after teammate Gavin Wanganeen won a Brownlow. Andrew McLeod won two Norm Smiths in a row, Byron Pickett another. Adam Goodes is a dual Brownlow medallist.

Bateman was not the first indigenous player at Hawthorn. The Hawks

had had Cyril Collard in 1957-58, and Percy Cummings played five games in 1964-65. Willie Rioli was picked up in the 1990 draft but so strong was the line-up that he couldn't crack it for a senior game.

But much has changed since the arrival Bateman. Hawthorn is no longer painted as the conservative, middle-class club of the leafy eastern suburbs. Its near extinction in a failed merger bid with Melbourne in 1996 unveiled a new generation of supporters hailing from the south-east corridor - loud, aggressive and passionate fans whom you'd hardly call genteel.

In pure football terms, Hawthorn's fertile metropolitan recruiting ground is long gone, the Hawks, like everyone else, having to take their chances at the draft table. There's no playing it safe any more.

And thank goodness for that, might argue a whole new batch of Hawthorn fans.

Otherwise, the club might not have been as patient with the injury problems and personal trauma Bateman has had to endure on his path to 100 games. Nor taken a punt on the allegedly flighty Lance Franklin, now well on his way to becoming one of the best handful of players in the AFL.

Nor pursued another Rioli, the clearly freakishly talented Cyril. Nor upgraded a rookie lister in Cameron Stokes. Nor produced a proven goalkicker in Mark Williams.

These are the players set to form a good quarter of Hawthorn's next premiership team, one whose profile would be as different as imaginable to the old champs of the 1970s and 1980s.

It's an exciting prospect. And proof that cultural change at football clubs can be spawned by many things, whether a crisis, through sheer necessity or a hated rival's acquisition of a blinding talent that turns a trickle into a flood never previously foreseen.