HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has backed his onball brigade to negate the advantage that will likely be generated by West Coast's red-hot ruck duo of Dean Cox and Nic Naitanui.

Clarkson admits Hawks ruckmen Brent Renouf and David Hale will have their hands full when they clash with the in-form pair in Launceston on Saturday, but added the outcome of the ruck duel would not decide the overall result.

"Funnily enough, they beat Sydney significantly in the hitouts last week, but lost the clearances significantly as well," Clarkson said from Melbourne airport on Friday.

"My experience in the game is that if you have a dominant ruck duo, it usually means you're going to get first supply of the ball, but that's not always the case.

"It certainly wasn't the case last week and that's probably the reason in the end that Sydney won the game - they were able to scout those West Coast hits really well.

"At different stages throughout the course of tomorrow's game, we're going to need to do the same. We'll be working at ground level pretty hard to make sure we try and win the stoppage battle."

While the Eagles are ranked No.1 in the competition for hitouts, Hawthorn's midfield unit is one of the most potent in the league and is strengthened by the returns of Sam Mitchell and Cyril Rioli, who both missed last weekend's thrashing of Richmond.

Rioli was suspended for that match after delivering a front-on bump to Melbourne's Nathan Jones, but Clarkson has not sought to further discipline his player over the clash.

"The incident itself happens 200 times in a game of footy, but the victim in this sense in Nathan Jones just happened to get winded so it just highlighted the incident more than it needed to," he said.

"Whether it's Cyril dishing out bumps like that or other players or players receiving bumps like that, it's part of the game. We haven't said anything at all [to him] to curb Cyril's ways because those things happen in a game of footy.

"It's a physical game."

Mitchell and Rioli were the only two inclusions to the side which lost young backman Ben Stratton to a season-ending knee injury. Fellow defender Tom Murphy was seriously considered to make his return to the backline as a replacement, but ultimately Clarkson decided to go with the extra onballer.

"We feel like we've got enough flexibility in our side to cope for Stratts' loss," he said.

"He's going to be a big loss … he's become a very important player to us, so we'll miss him terribly throughout the course of the year, but those sorts of incidents happen in footy.

"The most important thing now is that he gets a full recovery and rehabs that knee in a proper manner and we get him back for 2012.

"In the meantime we've got to make do without him and that will be a challenge for all of us, but we feel like we've got enough flexibility in the side to try a few things and see how we go."