HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson says a strong contribution across the board was the reason for his side's first win of the 2009 premiership season. 

Clarkson said Hawthorn's 54-point win over North Melbourne could also be attributed to some tweaking with the line-up. 

"We didn't want to go zip-three, but we weren't playing atrocious footy in the first two rounds of the season," Clarkson said.

"We still kicked 31 goals in the first two rounds of the season against the Cats and the Swans, so our ball-use wasn't too bad, but we were just leaking too much at the back end.

"We corrected that today and we restricted the Kangaroos to 10 goals, which was a great effort, but the pressure across the ground was a lot better than what it had the previous two weeks."

With injuries decimating the Hawks in the early part of the season, Clarkson said he was unsure how long it would take before he had his best side on the park.

"We're not certain of what of our best combination is – we know that [Brad] Sewell, [Robert] Campbell, [Simon] Taylor and [Michael] Osborne are very, very important players for us," he said.

"But when you get kids like [Cameron] Stokes, [Garry] Moss, [Ryan] Schoenmakers and [Brendn] Whitecross … and [Brent] Renouf had to shoulder a fair amount of the ruck responsibility this particular game.

"When you've got guys to step up like that – that's what we're liking about our start to the season and although we've only got one win, we've given young guys an opportunity and that'll continue to put pressure on."

Clarkson praised the tagging performance of Moss on Brent Harvey in just his third match.

The 2008 premiership coach was also delighted with skipper Sam Mitchell's performance, after he was restricted by Sydney Swans co-captain Brett Kirk last round.

"He responded in the right manner today – he was tremendous," Clarkson said.

"'Mitch' lowered his colours last week, but bounced back in the way we expect him to as the captain of our club."
Clarkson also spoke about the tragic death of Rob Dickson and his five-year-old son in a car accident during a holiday in South Africa.

"He's not just going to be missed by our footy club, he's going to be missed by the footy world," the 2008 premiership coach said.

Clarkson said he found out shortly speaking to his players on Saturday.

"[Football manager] Mark Evans only took the call from our CEO and chairman only five minutes before we addressed the group," he said.

"The tragic thing for Rob is that he's worked so hard … he had just got to the point where the professional way that he'd gone about his work was starting to be recognised as someone who had significant expertise in his field.

"He worked 20 years to build that up, so it's just so tragic that he can't carry that forward any longer."

Clarkson spoke about Dickson during his post-match media conference after his side's 54-point win over North Melbourne at Docklands on Sunday.

He openly brought up Dickson after being asked about the much-publicised chicken video issue involving North Melbourne during the week.

Instead of spending time focusing on that incident, Clarkson spoke to his players about the more profound issue, the tragic loss of Dickson.

"Some things like the one with Rob comes completely left field and we had to address that with our players yesterday morning, before they went home," he said.

"He being a past player, he's been an active past player and whilst he's a generation or two prior to these blokes playing, a lot of them, especially the Ben Dixons, the [Shane] Crawfords and Johnny Barkers have had a lot to do with Rob over the journey.