Thanks Jack for your reply. You have the sequence of an example right. In fact, thinking about it further I think I have an elegant solution.
Use containers! So we animate the sprite one way (say rotations using transformAroundPoint or center), and the container another (say x,y).
Just tried it and it works!
I know a pic (or an FLA) says a thousand words, but I use a wrapper around the tweening classes, so don't really have something to show per se.