HAWTHORN Coach Alastair Clarkson is prepared for the Hawks to have expectation lumped on their shoulders once again after their gritty 32-point victory against highly-touted Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on Saturday.
The Crows were tipped to rebound from their horrible 2018 and put the Hawks to the sword, but Clarkson's men had other ideas with a brilliant defensive performance.
The Hawks restricted the Crows to just seven goals as they recorded their 10th win in their past 11 meetings, claiming victory 12.15 (87) to 7.13 (55).
"We'd like to think it'd be more spectacular than that, but sometimes it's not," Clarkson said.
"Sometimes it's about how many guys can play their role and chip in when it's required and win some of those important moments in games that are 50/50s and you just get the ball forward.
"We by and large did that better than Adelaide in today's game."
Clarkson said the Hawks couldn't afford to get ahead of themselves as they now would have to deal with the pressure of being strong favourites going into next week's encounter with the Western Bulldogs.
"Such is the evenness of the competition, we've got to put that four points in the bank and get ourselves set for next week's game, which promises to be just as hard, or strangely a little bit harder now we've won this game on the road," he said.
"We perhaps came into this game as a pretty significant underdog.
"You win the game, and everyone thinks Hawthorn's on the march again.
"We've just got to back it up again with another really honest performance against the Bulldogs next week."
The Hawks lost many of the key indicators – disposals (-70), contested possessions (-17), clearances (-9) and inside 50s (-3) – but were able to nullify the quality of the Crows' forward entries.
"I thought the lads were really consistent with their application across the field, whether it was the pressure applied by the forwards or the hunt and grunt of our midfielders and just hanging in," Clarkson said.
Liam Shiels dislocated a finger, but isn't in any doubt to face the Bulldogs, while recruits Chad Wingard (calf) and Tom Scully (foot) are close to returning.
"He (Wingard) and Scully will play some footy in the next week or two," Clarkson said.
"We just need to determine where and how much game time they will play.
"They've got themselves ready, particularly Scully over a long period of time."
