HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson will have more than a passing interest in Sunday's Fremantle-Essendon match after the Hawks kept their slim finals chances alive with a 42-point win over Richmond on Saturday night.

A Freo win leaves the reigning premier in with a shot at defending the 2008 title despite a disappointing season to date, but Clarkson hasn't seen anything from his team to suggest it is worthy of such good fortune.
 
"We need to play a lot better than we did tonight if we want to go deeper in the season," Clarkson said.

"At the present time we don't deserve to be playing finals footy with the way that we've played over the course of the season.

"If we manage to limp in there we'll take it and we'll progress as far as we can, but right at the present time our form hasn't been good enough and that was reflected in tonight's [performance].

"It's extraordinary the way the season is panning out, but it might all be extinguished tomorrow. It might all be big smiles tonight and sad faces tomorrow."

The Tigers trailed by just 13 points early in the last quarter before the Hawks pulled away, but Clarkson lamented the regular turnovers and skill errors that punctuated the performance.

Hawthorn generated 66 inside 50s to Richmond's 39, which Clarkson said was comparable to the discrepancy produced by Collingwood in last week's encounter with the Tigers.

"[The Magpies] won by nearly 100 points, but we just weren't able to capitalise on the opportunities we had," he said.

"That's partly to do with the manner in which Collingwood is playing at the minute … and partly to do with us not being quite there at the moment."

The coach was pleased to be able to expose youngsters like debutant Riley Milne and Shane Savage to the level and was particularly happy to see unlucky ruckman Max Bailey back out on the park after successive knee reconstructions kept him sidelined for the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

"It's just great that we saw the big number one out there," he said of Bailey's 23 hit-out performance.

"We're just pleased that he got through a game of footy because he's been out of the game a long time.

"He was pretty well cooked at different stages of the game because it's a great step-up in intensity from the VFL to the AFL. He'll get another run at it next week against the Bombers and then we'll see what happens from there.

"Either way [it was great] for him to get the belief in himself that he can participate at the level again and jump into the pre-season training. Hopefully it will be onward and upward for him from this point on."