HAWTHORN skipper Sam Mitchell has defended coach Alastair Clarkson in the wake of Jeff Kennett’s stinging rebuke over recent poor performances.

Losses to Port Adelaide and the Sydney Swans in the past fortnight spurred the Hawks' president to release a statement via the club’s website which pointed the finger of blame squarely at the players and the football department which he said had been “outplayed and outcoached” by the Swans.

Mitchell accepted the criticism levelled at the playing group, which he said needed to play with more passion this week, but he went into bat for his coach on Tuesday.

“We did get outplayed, didn’t we? We lost by 44 points so that one’s pretty clear,” Mitchell said from Waverley Park.

“The coaching is opinion. I’m not sure how much time Jeff’s spent in the coach’s box, but I wouldn’t think it’s as much time as our coaches.

"No one puts more into their footy than Clarko and his staff. They’re here at the crack of dawn every morning and they don’t leave until it’s dark.

“They’re working hard and the players are working hard. No one puts more into their footy, we wouldn’t think, than our footy club.”

While Mitchell disagreed with some of the content of Kennett’s open letter to members and supporters, he dismissed the notion it could create divisions within the club and defended the president’s right to share his views.

“I think when you have Jeff at your footy club that comes with it,” he said.

“He’s great for our 54,500 members, but probably sometimes for the 48 players he’s a bit of hard work.

“But that’s part of his role. That's the way he views it to be the best president of our footy club and that’s his right to do so. I think since he’s been here the club has gone from strength to strength and just now on the field we have to do things a bit better.”

Brent Guerra became the latest Hawthorn player to run foul of the Match Review Panel with his hit on Nick Malceski on the weekend, but Mitchell denied there was an underlying discipline issue behind the run of suspensions this season.

“I think when they’re undisciplined acts then that’s something that we worry about and we speak to the players,” he said.

“But when it’s something that happens in a split-second moment of what goes on in the game then I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about it.

“We don’t want to have players out. Cyril [Rioli’s] was a bit of a discipline thing, so we had a bit of a chat with him to see where he was at, to see how he’s feeling, why he did that and how we can prevent it in the future, but certainly for Brent I don’t think that’s the same case.”

After being slow out of the blocks in recent weeks Mitchell declared the first five to 10 minutes of Sunday’s clash against the surging Demons to be crucial.

The Kangaroos and Melbourne loom large in the rear-view mirror as the battle for a top-eight spot heats up, but Mitchell said the Hawks could not afford to spend any time looking at the bigger picture.

“I couldn’t tell you what we are [in terms of] win-loss at the moment,” he said.

“All I know is that if we win this week then we’re one step closer to hopefully getting that finals berth".