HAWTHORN held its first intra-club trial match of 2008 on Friday with the majority of its playing list put through a rigorous hitout at Aurora Stadium in Launceston.

The brown team, coached by Todd Viney, took on a gold team overseen by Barry Mitchell over four 20-minute quarters, with Viney's squad enjoying a comfortable victory.

The result was of no consequence, however; many players swapped teams throughout the course of the match as head coach Alastair Clarkson strived to get the best possible evaluation out of the exercise.

There were some intriguing match-ups at the first bounce, with master tagger Brad Sewell given the job on new skipper Sam Mitchell, Grant Birchall going to Shane Crawford and rookie Hugh Sandilands given the imposing task of nullifying gun forward Lance Franklin.

The youngster did a reasonable job, too, keeping Buddy quiet early before he broke loose to finish with three goals. Tim Boyle was the most dangerous forward on the ground, his five goals all coming in the first half.

Clarkson maintained that he wasn't overly concerned with individual performances at this time of the year but said he had been pleased with the trial game in general.

"It was their first fair dinkum hitout against one another for the year so your real goal is to get through the game reasonably unscathed and hope that the guys build a bit of match conditioning because their preparation thus far has been spot-on," Clarkson said.

"The most important thing for us is not so much how many marks, kicks or handballs they got today, but whether they followed the structures and got through the game with a good lot of run in their legs. That was pretty pleasing.

"It's really now a matter of getting ready for round one versus Melbourne. Part of that is the first trial game and then work through a number of games in the NAB Cup series."

A few youngsters caught the eye, with Brent Renouf acquitting himself well in the ruck, Beau Muston getting some quality early touches in the middle, while Cameron Stokes and Cyril Rioli each kicked two goals.

Tim Clarke and Mark Williams moved well in their first competitive runs since long injury spells last season, and while new recruit Stuart Dew didn't have a huge influence on the game, Clarkson was pleased with the way he ran out the contest.

The Hawks came through the match largely unscathed, although promising ruckman Luke McEntee hobbled from the ground favouring his left hamstring late in the first term.

Absent players due to tailored pre-season programs included Ben McGlynn, Beau Dowler, Mitch Thorp, Jarryd Roughead, Rick Ladson, Campbell Brown and Max Bailey.