HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson says the club won’t be rushing to change Lance Franklin’s goalkicking technique despite an erratic display in the Hawks’ 31-point win over the Sydney Swans at the MCG.

Franklin has 14 shots at goal but ended with 4.7, two out on the fulls and another shot which shanked off his shin from 45m and failed to make the distance.

“We have had a lot of people give us advice on it and we’ve found the best thing is for him to keep to his natural rhythm,” Clarkson said.

“We are hopeful that over time he will continue to rehearse his work and he’ll get a better return than what he did today.

“But he was still an enormously influential player on the ground and it would have been a greater margin if he had been able to convert some of those chances.”

Clarkson said Franklin’s youth meant there was plenty of time for him to improve his conversion rate.

“Both boys [Franklin and Jarryd Roughead] are only 21 years of age so we’d expect there would be some significant improvement in their overall games but particularly their goalkicking in the months ahead,” Clarkson said.

“We are just pretty excited about what he might kick if he starts kicking them straight,” Clarkson said.

“He is regularly getting eight, nine or 10 shots at goal, which is pretty exciting.

“He had more shots on goal than anyone at our club, he does a lot of rehearsal, he didn’t handle them too well [today] but I think it was pretty common.

“The surface is a little bit shifty at the ’G at the present time, even [Amon] Buchanan, who is a reliable shot at goal missed a few shots.”

The Hawks look to have sewn up a top three spot with Sunday’s win, having moved 14 premiership points clear of fourth place with just seven rounds to play.

And Clarkson said reversing the recent losing trend against the Swans meant the Hawks had ticked off all their boxes in the home and away round.

The others were wins this season over Adelaide at AAMI Stadium, Brisbane Lions at the Gabba and the Dockers in Perth which all showed that the group was heading in the right direction.

“We obviously want to finish as high as we can and we will if we continue to win more games than we lose in the last seven rounds but the key focus for us going in was to try and resurrect our poor form against this side over the past three years,” Clarkson said.

Clarkson said the injury that kept Mark Williams out for much of 2007 had been a blessing in disguise for the club and player. “It has in a sense because we had to find other focal points up forward,” Clarkson said.

“His injury allowed us to put more games into [Tim] Boyle and Roughead and Franklin and now he has come back into the side, we have got the liberty of playing him further up the ground a bit more.

“We are trying to make him more flexible.”