HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has praised North Melbourne for wanting the win more after his team's 27-point loss at the MCG on Saturday afternoon.

The Hawks never led throughout the match, and each time they got back on even terms North found a way to reply, twice through goals to young forward Lindsay Thomas.

With a final tally of 10.16, including 1.3 to Lance Franklin and 2.5 to Jarryd Roughead, the Hawks appeared to have contributed significantly to their downfall, but Clarkson was having none of it.

"Oh no, I think you have to give full credit to the Kangaroos, they played a hungrier brand of footy than what we did today, and they made the most of their opportunities and we didn't make the most of ours, and that's good footy," he said after the match. "Full credit goes to the way that they played today."

The Hawks had a two-minute period in the last quarter where three key forwards – Lance Franklin, Roughead and Tim Boyle – missed easy shots when they were less than four goals down, but Clarkson said that wasn't a turning point.

"I thought the Kangaroos controlled the game from the outset. We were trying as much as we could to stay in the contest, and we never really got any run-on throughout the course of the game at all, and that's full credit to the Kangas."

With Trent Croad missing with a bruised hip, Tim Clarke out with a strained quad and Chance Bateman another couple of weeks away with a hamstring, Clarkson said the team was unable to play its usual style of football.

"We've got four or five of our best runners out of the side at the moment, and we just couldn't get that overlap run that has been such a feature of our play for the last 18 months to two years. With Bateman and Clarke out of the side for this week's game, it really hurts us in that regard.

"We'll get some of those runners back over the next couple of weeks and that'll help the structure of our side, but we really lacked that overlap run to really put pressure on the Kangaroos defence."