HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson says his team will utilise its VFL affiliate to get extra game time into its players ahead of the home-and-away season, as Xavier Ellis and Michael Osborne are named to play with Box Hill.

While the Hawks have recalled a number of stars for their third pre-season game on Saturday against Melbourne, they have also rested some senior players including Shaun Burgoyne and Brent Guerra.

With the pre-season competition boasting a range of unique rules not present in the season proper, the Hawks coach said that it is difficult to manage players’ game time.

“We’re going to play Ellis and Ossie (Michael Osborne) at Box Hill this week just so they can get that 70-80 per cent game time,” Clarkson said before training on Friday morning.

“(It is) just because they need more game time and they’ll get more opportunity to get a full game.

One of those unique rules is the much publicised “two and two” interchange and substitute rule, where only two players are available to be interchanged throughout the match, instead of three as seen in the home-and-away season.

This rule has been a talking point throughout the pre-season competition because of the impact it has on a team’s ability to manage players’ game time.

“The greatest difficulty for us, with this new system that there is at the moment is that you can’t play a guy just for 70 per cent of the game - that’s the ideal amount of time that you want to play guys at this time of year,” Clarkson said.

With the pre-season competition entering into its final phase, with the grand final next week, Clarkson said that his side will ramp up its preparation as they head into a round one showdown against Collingwood.

“By round 3 or 4 (of the pre-season) you’re starting to get towards the side that you perhaps are going to put out there in the first game of the season, and the intensity picks up a little bit,” Clarkson said.

“In the first two rounds it's more about trying to monitor your loads and game time, and that will still be the case a little bit tomorrow night but by next week it’ll be full scale.

“We’ve got some of the guys (in the team) who we rested last week, and they’ll hopefully play the next two games (before) a rest (the week after) and get themselves right for round 1.”

Among the players who feature regularly throughout the season who won’t play on Saturday are Shaun Burgoyne and Brent Guerra who have been rested after already playing in two pre-season matches.

Defender Josh Gibson will also be among the Hawks in the stands, after reporting a back problem in Tasmania last weekend, which kept him out of the match against Greater Western Sydney.

 “He had a bit of stiffness in his back after the flight when we went down to Tassie, and that hasn’t settled as much as we would have liked,” Clarkson said.

“He’s trained pretty well yesterday, he hardly did anything (on Tuesday), so we’ll err on the side of caution and get a really solid week of training (into him).

“He was up there before doing some really solid work. He could have played this week, but we’re probably better off just getting him right for next week.”


Kate Salemme is a member of Hawthorn Football Club’s digital media team reporting exclusively for hawthornfc.com.au from the Ricoh Centre.