HAWTHORN and St Kilda have defended themselves, while trying to avoid blaming each other, for Saturday's low-scoring game.

Hawks onballer Luke Hodge and Saints coach Ross Lyon on Monday explained how their teams played in Saturday night's match, which Hawthorn won by 28 points.

Only four goals were scored in the first half, despite reasonable playing conditions.

"There's a lot of apportioning of blame ... a few of our leaders are disappointed we're being accused of flooding," Lyon said.

"We didn't flood, we held our defence, we had a lot of numbers back on our forwards, which entails being patient with the ball at times.

"What I've said to the group is if you had your time again, we would have run and used the ball a bit more through the corridor, been a bit more aggressive with the ball."

Later, Lyon added: "When we had the ball at times we were over-patient and could have attacked with a bit more run and carry to break the flood we were encountering."

Hodge agreed the match was "quite frustrating" and added it was pointless for the Hawks to move the ball quickly into attack.

"On the weekend, every time we looked up forward, they had a couple of extra numbers back," he said.

"It probably wasn't worth kicking down there, because they would have just rebounded down the other end.

"It was an ugly sight, but later on it sort-of freed up for us and we got a few more goals."

Hodge and Lyon disagreed on the duel between Saints key forward Nick Riewoldt and his opponent Campbell Brown.

Riewoldt had more than a dozen marks and kicked two goals out of six, but spent a lot of the game playing up the ground.

"Riewoldt had a lot of the ball, but ... any time Riewoldt was in 50, Campbell Brown was right with him," Hodge said.

Lyon said the Hawks put a double-team on Riewoldt to help Brown.

"Campbell Brown would think 'Gee, it's nice to go into a game knowing I'm going to get a fair bit of support in that role'," Lyon said.

The Saints coach added that his team needed to be patient when trying to best use their forward stars, Riewoldt and Fraser Gehrig.

"Historically, what's worried St Kilda? What do teams historically do to St Kilda? I would argue they drop numbers back on their tall forwards," he said.

"(That) forced even St Kilda last year to play a lot more slow ball.

"So when you're planning for St Kilda, who do you want to stop? You want to stop Nick Riewoldt, Fraser Gehrig and Justin Koschitzke.

"How do they stop that? They put numbers back. How do your counteract that? Well you need smarter ball use that at times means a bit slower tempo - the trap is that you get stuck in slow tempo and you don't make good decisions to take the game on and I felt that happened".