ALASTAIR Clarkson says the Hawks were beaten by a hungrier opponent on Friday night, but has confidence in his side to turn things around quickly.
The Hawks suffered a disappointing 22-point defeat to Port Adelaide, which is a blow to the side's top-two ambitions
The loss was the Hawks' second to Port Adelaide this season, and should West Coast defeat the Western Bulldogs at home on Sunday, the Hawks will almost certainly have to travel west in the first week of finals.
However Clarkson has backed his charges to bounce back.
"It's not ideal (to lose at this stage of the season), but there's a lot of sides this time of year that get rolled that still go on (to win premierships)," Clarkson said.
"It's not like 'Oh, gee, this is catastrophic, we're no chance of winning the flag now'.
"That's far from the truth. We weren't anywhere near our best tonight, we were shown up by a side that were hungrier and moved the ball better than we did on the night, but we're extremely capable as a group of bouncing back and that's what we plan to do."
The Hawks struggled to contain Port Adelaide's Robbie Gray (33 disposals), Sam Gray (34) and Wingard (four goals).
Robbie Gray sparked the Power's fast start with 13 touches in the first term as Port surge to a 14-point advantage.
"He's a good player and sometimes good players get a hold of you and he got a hold of us in the first quarter," Clarkson said.
Paddy Ryder (14 disposals, 40 hit-outs) produced one of his best performances rucking one-out against Ben McEvoy and Jarryd Roughead, following the withdrawal of David Hale (general soreness) pre-game.
"(Ryder) played well and gave them good supply but all their really, really good players played one of their best games for the year," Clarkson said.
"Port Adelaide are a very, very good side – I can't explain why they're 10 (wins) and 10 (losses). So maybe the focus should be on them in a sense … as we saw tonight if their best five or six players play well, good luck to anyone beating them, really.
Clarkson dismissed any suggestion that playing the final two games of the home and away season against the Lions and the Blues was a concern.
"We just want to play again after tonight, so we don't care who it is or where it is. Don't even care when it is," he said.
"We're pretty keen to atone for a pretty poor performance tonight."
