HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has praised his players’ mental strength after the barnstorming preliminary final win over St Kilda at the MCG on Saturday night.

The Hawks put on a clinical display of hard-running football to lead by as much as 68 points before settling for the comfortable 54-point that set up a grand final clash with Geelong next week.

"It's good for the coaching staff that it wasn't a nail-biter, I can tell you that," Clarkson said.

"I was really pleased … with the endeavour and spirit of the group tonight. It's been a great effort by the whole football club, not just the playing group but the coaching group and the administration to get ourselves in a position where we can be in a grand final.

"The next challenge, obviously, is to give ourselves every chance of winning it. We demonstrated with our attack on the footy and our use of the footy that we're a very worthy grand finalist this year and we intend to go as hard as we possibly can next week."

Stephen Gilham was a late inclusion at the expense of Tom Murphy, with he and Trent Croad largely nullifying St Kilda forwards Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke except for a brief period in the third quarter.

"Whilst it would have been great to suffocate the St Kilda side for the whole game we weren't able to do that because they're a top four side and they've been a side of great quality," Clarkson said.

"It's very hard to keep a side down for four quarters, but I thought we did tremendously well to keep them to as low a score as we did with the firepower of Koschitzke and Riewoldt."

That Hawthorn was able to kick 18 goals with just one coming from John Coleman Medallist Lance Franklin says a lot about the even contribution Clarkson received.

The dangerous forward came off with a hand injury in the first half, but the coach gave assured supporters it was not a major issue.
 
"He's had a grumbling hand for a while and at different stages if it gets punched or he marks the ball in an incorrect sort of fashion he just jars it a little bit and then he comes off and gets going again - he'll be fine," he said.

"That last handball that he fed off to Mark Williams for his fifth goal said a bit about how team-focused we were tonight. We come up against a side ironically who is very, very similar – and the pioneer and benchmark in that regard in the competition in Geelong.

"We're aspiring to be like them in that regard, it's the reason why they've been the premier side over the last two years, but we're chasing really, really hard and we get an opportunity next week to see how close we've come in that chase."