Hawthorn Coach Alastair Clarkson had multiple frustrations following Saturday’s loss to Melbourne, but the one he was most disappointed by was his side’s poor disposal execution.

Clarkson highlighted this area of the Hawks’ performance when looking to attribute what went wrong in their fourth loss of the season.

“We were just unable to capitalise on some clean ball-using areas, whether that was fumbled handballs, dropped marks or poor execution by foot,” Clarkson said post-match. 

“We had some opportunities to make the Melbourne defence pay, but we couldn’t take that chance.”

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The Hawks had 12 of their 22 players record a 75 per cent disposal efficiency or less against the Demons.

The side’s three leading disposal getters against the Demons, Liam Shiels (65.5 per cent from 29 disposals), James Worpel (58 per cent from 24) and Ricky Henderson (68 per cent from 22) all fit inside this category.

In fairness, Hawthorn did still trump Melbourne in the statistics, with a 73 per cent efficiency compared to the Demons’ 68 per cent.

But the fact that the Hawks’ 74 per cent disposal efficiency in their Round 4 loss to St Kilda was their greatest number to this point in the season suggests that an area the club has been renowned for over the past decade may be experiencing a slight downfall in 2019.

Of the players in the competition who have had at least 50 touches this year, only James Sicily ranks inside the top 50 at 25^th for disposal efficiency, while Jarman Impey (56^th) and Blake Hardwick (68^th) are the only other Hawks in the top 100.

With Clarkson identifying this as an area of improvement following the Round 7 match, Hawks fans can trust that the club will be looking to rectify their execution against GWS this week.