HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson believes the barrage of criticism that followed his team's second-half fade out against the Sydney Swans helped spur the Hawks to victory against St Kilda on Saturday night.

Clarkson described the second-half performance against the Swans as "nothing short of putrid", but was delighted with how his players finished over the top of the Saints at the MCG to record the 35-point win.

"We copped a bit of a whack throughout the course of the week and rightly so," Clarkson said.

"Our performance in the second half [against the Swans] - we don't hide away from that and we deserved what came our way in the press this week - [but] we're a lot better than that as a football side and a footy club.

"We're pleased that we were able to respond.

"The game was right in the balance at three-quarter time and the guys responded really positively in the last quarter and managed to get away with a really solid victory."

But while his players weren't able to completely shield themselves from the stinging assessments of their round five performance, he felt the harshest criticism came from within.

"I think the most critical [people] are the players themselves," he said.

"They knew their performance was disappointing in the second half last week and they wanted to rectify that.

"We were coming up against a tough opponent on a six-day break, [but] ... we were that disappointed with our effort."

Against the Saints, several players, including Luke Hodge and Lance Franklin, were worked on by club physiotherapists during the bruising encounter, but the most worrying moment came when defender Ben Stratton clashed heads with David Armitage.

Stratton was sidelined for about 15 minutes after the first-quarter incident, but was cleared of concussion and returned to the game in the second term.  

Clarkson praised the efforts of Cyril Rioli and Franklin, who contributed six and five goals respectively, and the performance of Jordan Lewis in keeping St Kilda playmaker Nick Dal Santo to 14 touches.

"We really rate 'Dal' highly ... he's one of the more polished users of the footy in the competition, but Jordan was able to negate his influence on the contest so that was important," he said.

"Fortunately for us tonight we had guys like Jordan who did their roles very well. We probably had more winners on the night than the Saints did and that's why we ran out 35-point winners."

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs