HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has said he isn’t concerned about Buddy Franklin’s confidence going into this Saturday night’s clash against St. Kilda after the star forward kicked 4.7 in the club’s victory over the Swans last Sunday.

“The great thing about Buddy is [that] he’s so resilient,” Clarkson said.

“There have been games where he’s really kicked poorly and then the next week he comes out and kicks really well.

“So all we can bank on is the fact that he does a lot of practice at training and he gets a lot of opportunities in games to execute the skills as well as goal kicking.

“We’re confident that over the journey he’ll steadily improve and become a more consistent shot on goal.”

Speaking of records, Clarkson is hopeful that he can improve his coaching stats against the Saints.

Clarkson's only victory against the Saints was last year in round eight.

Last year's victory came by 28 points in a dour, low-scoring contest, but Clarkson said he was confident this weekend’s contest would be a more high-scoring affair.

“We’ve only won one game in the time that I’ve been coaching with Hawthorn and that wasn’t a really rip roaring game either," he said.

"It was nearly the worst game of footy for the year.

“I’m not sure how the game is going to unfold tomorrow night but both sides want to play a pretty attacking game of football and I reckon St. Kilda have played their best football when they’ve tried to run and carry the ball in recent weeks.”

Clarkson said that although the Hawks would employ some tactics they used to shut down the Swans last week, he believed that Ross Lyon’s charges were a different proposition.

“There are little things in their game that naturally enough Ross would have brought from the Sydney Swans, but I think there’s also been a lot of things that have been initiated both by the St. Kilda players or Ross himself, in terms of the personnel that St. Kilda have got, that’s quite different to Sydney.

“So we’ll be playing a little bit differently than what we did last week against Sydney but having said that there are some elements that are similar so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

As for Clarkson’s tip for the top of the table Geelong versus Bulldogs clash on Saturday at the Cattery, he was keeping tight lipped. “We’re just worried about our game. They’ll work themselves out. It will be a great contest I’m sure.”