DEFENSIVE pressure has been the focus for Hawthorn ahead of Saturday’s clash with the Western Bulldogs with Hawks’ coach Alastair Clarkson wary of the Dogs’ high-scoring attack.
Rodney Eade’s side leads the competition in points scored despite coming off its first loss of the season to North Melbourne last week.
“They’ve got multiple goal-scoring options which suggests that they bring the ball into their forward line in a pretty fluent sort of fashion,” Clarkson said at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport on Friday, as the Hawks flew out to Launceston for Saturday’s round 10 encounter at Aurora Stadium.
“They’re not one-dimensional up forward at all. They’re less reliant on Brad Johnson as their key forward target. Robert Murphy’s been outstanding for them and Will Minson has added a different dimension to them up forward too.
“They’re a very, very good side and we’re going to have to play really well.”
The Hawks go into the match of the round a game clear and undefeated at the top of the ladder, but Clarkson is more concerned with preparing his players for each weekly challenge rather than with trying to maintain that winning run.
“This is a long, tough competition and at some point in the season we’re going to get rolled; it’s not going to be any great catastrophe,” he said.
“You just prepare as well as you can each week [because] you’re coming up against quality opposition each week. No one gave Collingwood a chance last week and no one gave Melbourne a chance, but both those sides did tremendously well.
“It’s a tough competition and at some point in time we’re going to get defeated, but we just move on to the next week and count up the wins at the end of the year and hope we’ve got enough to qualify for the finals.”
Clarkson felt the Dogs had recaptured the form of 2006 when they reached the semi-final stage before bowing out to eventual premiers West Coast. And their ability to remain largely injury-free was a key factor.
“We need to try and negate some of their significant strengths which is pretty important and try and expose a couple of weaknesses, but they haven’t got too many weaknesses to expose at the minute,” he said.
“They’re in pretty good nick and we’ll have to play at least as well as the Kangaroos did last week to get across the line.”
The Hawks welcome back rugged midfielder Jordan Lewis, after he was a late withdrawal last week, with Clarkson expecting his return to have a significant effect on his side’s ability to win the contested ball.
Skipper Sam Mitchell will lead the team out after escaping a one-match ban thanks to an early guilty plea to a tripping charge during the week, but Clarkson said he had not cautioned the silky-skilled onballer on his physical approach to the game.
“He’s an experienced player; he knows how to handle himself in games of footy,” he said.
“He’s the captain of our club and a very important player for us so he’s experienced enough to work those sorts of things out for himself.”
