Hawthorn fans, rejoice; Alastair Clarkson’s guitar skills may see some improvement by season’s end!

Not that we all don’t love it when the Hawks’ coach whips out the guitar and changes the lyrics to a classic, but even he admits that it's sometimes difficult to stay in tune. He’s human, after all!

“I’ve been working very hard on my guitar playing for about five years so far with very little improvement,” Clarkson laughed during his Round 5 pre-match press conference. 

“So maybe with four of five weeks of a little bit of downtime (in the interstate hub) there may be a one percent improvement.

“From the players’ point of view, it’s definitely required, and from my wife’s point of view, she thinks my strum pattern is very ordinary because it’s just the same one every time. 

“So I’m going to try and work on getting a different strum pattern by the time I return so my wife thinks I’m okay, rather than this dud who’s made no improvement in five years.” 

Guitar practice aside, Clarkson says he and his team are embracing the curve balls that season 2020 is throwing. 

“We’ve been preparing our players for a fair period of time that there was a chance that they’re going into a hub.

“Each player had gone through that with their families. Every player is keen to come and participate and we’ll see where it all goes.

“Because there’s a little bit of downtime, it’s actually really important in our view that they do have some activities that they can do outside of just footy, otherwise we’ll all go stir crazy.

“So taking golf sticks and surf boards and guitars and whatever else they might take along the way to pass the time is a really good thing, so we really encourage that. 

“That plan has been in place for the best part of a month, and all we’ve really done is press the button on it in the last couple of days.”

Hawthorn will head up to Sydney tomorrow to play GWS, before staying on the road in an interstate hub for a period of up to 32 days. 

The revised Round 6 and 7 fixtures see the Hawks take on Collingwood and Melbourne in the following fortnight.