Hawthorn Coach Sam Mitchell has labelled his side’s 67-point loss to the Gold Coast Suns at Heritage Bank Stadium on Sunday as “a reality check”.

Mitchell said while his team’s form had impressed in recent weeks, he acknowledged the disparity between its best and worst performances was evident.

“We had won three out of four and we were feeling ‘okay, maybe we’re moving along pretty well’ – but today was a reality check,” Mitchell said.

“We know our best footy is pretty good, but when we don’t play at our best and we can’t consistently perform at the level then we get a touch up.

“Today, we just had no answers for their game style in the end and they performed pretty well across the four quarters.”

The Hawks started strongly, kicking the opening three goals of the match, but things quickly unravelled after Gold Coast managed to keep the visitors goalless in the second term.

But with the margin less than two goals at half time, there was still a sign of hope for the brown and gold faithful, before the hosts took total control in the third term.

“We had to change a couple of things – they got right on top of us at the start of the second quarter,” Mitchell said.

“We were actually able to stem the bleeding – it was only 10 points at half time – they should have been way further in front at that stage.

“Going into half time I thought, ‘we’re down 10 points at an away venue, this is not a bad position to be in’ and that we could go okay here, but unfortunately, they got right on top the rest of the game and we couldn’t get anything going.”

Despite struggles across the league of team coming off the bye, with a 2-10 win-loss record from 12 matches, Mitchell said there were “no excuses” for his side’s poor performance.

“Coming off the bye we wanted to make sure we started well, we had three pretty ordinary interstate games across the course of the year, and in all of them we had a bad start,” Mitchell said.

“So, at the 10 minute mark (of the first quarter), I thought the boys were in a good spot, performing to the right level and going about it in the right way.

“Unfortunately, we just couldn’t sustain it and their pressure continued on.”

While acknowledging the season has had its ups and downs, the coach conceded that he “couldn’t find too many positives” from the match.

“Being on the journey that we’re on, we know there are going to be steps forward, and unfortunately some of those steps will be very, very, very small,” Mitchell said.

“We just never could find a way to get ourselves up and going to create energy in the game, and I think unfortunately the players and the staff feel like we’ve left our people down.

“A bit of credit goes to Gold Coast, they did a great job – but I think our players and staff would be disappointed with the performance.”

Listen to Mitchell’s full press conference below.