HAWTHORN'S round 24 match against Gold Coast may have been a dead rubber but Alastair Clarkson's spirited address to the players at half-time suggested otherwise.

Clarkson's rant obviously worked. The Hawks turned a half-time deficit into a 10-point win, but veteran Sam Mitchell said the side still was not impressed with the way they had played.

"He (Clarkson) just said we needed to play better," Mitchell said.

"We were being dictated a bit, we needed to pay how we wanted to play and we probably didn't do that well through the whole four quarters really.

"We were fortunate we were able to win the game really, we didn't play very well but having said that we got a fair bit of conditioning out of it and that was the focus.

"It is good conditioning for us playing in warm weather on a hard deck. It is good to get that conditioning right."

The Hawks now face Geelong who, after Friday's 96-point win over Collingwood, is full of momentum again.

"They are in good form and are playing pretty well, the Cats. They will be confident going into next week and probably rightly so," Mitchell said.

"They have got a lot of depth you can't go to one player because they have got very good depth.

"They are very consistent across the board, some of their young players are having an impact at the moment but we can't forget about the blokes that have been around a while and already played in their two premierships."

Mitchell said he expected big things from the Suns, who turned a 61-point loss to the Hawks at Aurora Stadium in Round 13 into the narrow loss at Metricon Stadium 11 rounds later.

"We played them down in Tassie and they were raw and young and since then they have come a long way and I think they are going to be a very good side in the years to come," he said.