DESPITE his side being rocked by the late omission of lone ruckman Brent Renouf, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson was philosophical following the 12-point loss to North Melbourne in Launceston on Sunday evening.

Renouf came into the match carrying a virus and despite warming up with the team was unable to start the match as scheduled.

“We tried to warm him up and just see what he’d be like because we were reasonably surprised how well he was at lunchtime today,” Clarkson said. “But once he got out there and did the warm-up he was no good, which sort of put us in a pickle. We haven’t got too many rucks as it is and the one we have got wasn’t able to get himself up to play.”

The Hawks hierarchy chose to rest their only big man in a bid to ensure his fitness for next weekend’s crunch match with the Bombers, but Clarkson was reluctant to chalk the loss down as a personnel issue.

“I reckon losing your ruckman is pretty significant when you’ve only got one of them,” he said.

“We had our chances to win the game irrespective of rucks and we’re disappointed we lost. We put ourselves in the position to win the game and we didn’t finish it well. We didn’t start well. In our first 10 minutes and our last 10 minutes they kicked six goals in that period of the game and full credit to them.

“We’re disappointed. We thought we did enough through the middle part of the game to get ourselves a win and we didn’t capitalise on the opportunities we had. They went forward and seemed to manufacture goals a little easier than we did.”

When asked about his team’s 30-tackle deficit for the match, Clarkson was again reluctant to lay blame.

“We’re disappointed to lose the game,” he said. “Is it because of the tackle count? I’ve got no idea.

“We had the ball 50 times more than the Kangaroos did tonight and usually when we have those opportunities to take the ball forward we usually win games of footy. We didn’t do it tonight.

“Stats are pretty meaningless. The only stat we focus on is the scoreboard one to be fair and we were two goals down at the end of the game.”