HAWTHORN'S only listed premiership player Stuart Dew believes making the Grand Final is simply not good enough – winning the premiership is all that matters.

Dew, who played in Port Adelaide's 2004 premiership side and has made a comeback to the AFL this season after being drafted by the Hawks last November, said the experience was much more than simply turning up on that one day in September.

"It's another opportunity to achieve your dream. It's been a long year for myself from where I was last year – I wouldn't have thought I'd be in this position. But I have tried to stress to the group that you never know [what can happen]. Some guys never get to play in one," Dew said.

"It's not enough to get into a grand final – you've got to make the most of it and leave everything out on the ground. You can't walk off thinking: 'Oh well, we'll be back next year'. The odds are you won't be, and that's the attitude we'll take in.

"It's not a celebration at all to get into a grand final. You don't want to be on the losers list."

"The Bulldogs and St Kilda both beat us in the season proper, and you know that finals are a different story," Dew said.

"You can't look back on form, so Geelong would say they can lift it a notch and we expect that, and we're the same. We're confident we've got the right group."

Dew, who is set to play his 15th match for the Hawks in the grand final, said frustration was the hardest thing to deal with after a one-year absence out of the game, having initially retired at the end of 2006.

"I don't I've played the football I'm capable of, and that's probably due to … my preparation over the summer, not being able to do a full pre-season," Dew said.

"But as the season has built, I've really started to get some game time, and I'm feeling a lot more comfortable than where I was 10 weeks ago when I was in and out of the side with little niggles.

"The main thing has been trying to keep my frustration in check."

Still, Dew never doubted he couldn't make it back at the highest level.

"We expected some injury or setback along the way, because you can't have 12 months out of the game and not doing much at all and getting back into professional sport," Dew said.

"We expected it, but not so soon, early in the year. We didn't expect that I'd be playing round one either. We were about the mark – we thought I'd play between 12 and 15 games, and I'm ticking over to my 15th game, so it's worked out OK."

Dew said Hawthorn fitness guru Andrew Russell had been pivotal in his comeback, as had some familiar faces from Port Adelaide.

"It's been good, because he's [Russell] known my history, so it's been a factor in someone drafting me in the condition I was in," Dew said.

"He knew where I could get to, and that was a big factor in having the confidence that I could come up.

"The whole [Port Adelaide] connection – not only with Andrew, but Geoff Morris, who was at Port and Alastair [Clarkson] and Damien Hardwick – I had a few guys in my favour who knew me as a person and knew what I could do.

"They saw the positives, whereas another club wouldn't have known about me and what I could bring to the group. I think every other club wondered what Hawthorn was doing."