HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson may well have turned his playing group's focus to winning another flag, but he's finding that everyone else is still quite eager to re-live the last one.

Players and fans alike toasted the club's 2008 triumph long and hard, but Clarkson firmly put a full stop on the post-premiership celebrations when he got his entire playing group together for the first time on November 17 last year. 

It's not that he wants to be a killjoy, it's just that AFL football waits for no one.

"You've got to move on pretty quickly in this game," Clarkson says. “That's the great feature of our game”.

"You get to Tuesday post-grand final and you're required to go to Canberra for the draft camp … You're already considering your list and your next group of players three or four days after the last game of the season.

"As much as we wanted to acknowledge the great performance of 2008, we needed to quickly get on to 2009 when so many of the other clubs had already started their planning for the year prior to us finishing.

While his players might have moved on, Hawk fans are keen to linger in the after-premiership glow just a little longer if the turnout at the club's Telstra AFL Community Camp functions across Tasmania is any indication.

But the coach is keeping a firm focus on delivering the supporters even more joy in the coming season.

"Our attitude as a club has got to be that if we don't continue to seek improvement and development within our own group, the rest of the competition will catch up and pass us by very, very quickly.

"It's such a brutal, tough industry that you need to stay at the forefront of change."

Youth is Clarkson's chief ally as he strives to stay ahead of the pack and banish any thoughts of a premiership hangover.

"We've still got such a young group and it's probably about constant improvement right across the board”, he says.

"With the retirement of [Shane Crawford] and the injection of three 17-year-olds in the draft, we've gone from being the fourth-youngest list in the competition to the second youngest.

"Usually premiership sides continue to mature and get older as you keep your list together, but we've made some changes that actually made our list younger.

“So there's an enormous amount of development and growth in that group."

Hawthorn kicks off its premiership defence with a grand final rematch against Geelong at the MCG on March 27.