Alastair Clarkson says he is both excited and nervous about the game's rule changes ahead of the Hawks' Round 1 battle against Essendon. 

Speaking predominantly about the alteration to the man on the mark rule, Clarkson said it left coaches at a crossroads on how to feel about the changes.

Having watched on as Richmond and Carlton kicked off the new season on Thursday night, the four-time premiership coach was asked how he felt about the rule following the first game of the year. 

Triple the debut celebrations!

"As a coach, the answer is always going to be both," Clarkson said at his press conference on Friday. 

"I'm excited by what opportunity it might present and I think we saw a bit of that last night - from what we can see from the small sample size of games we've seen thus far, scoring will be up a bit and the flow of the game has improved.

"That's going to have implications for how we defend though.

"So every coach in the competition is going to want to take advantage of the fact that you can attack a little bit better, but the flipside of that is how are you going to defend opposition when they're trying to do the same thing against you.

"It's going to be a really interesting first four or six weeks of the season in seeing how it all evolves and what coaches do - that's the life of an AFL coach."

With the Hawks set to unveil three debutants on Saturday night, Clarkson said it marked a new frontier for the club. 

"It's really exciting for our group to have an injection of young talent.

"We also have a couple of guys in Phillips and Hartigan who have played at other clubs, so we're excited.

"We understand it's where we're at as a footy club, we're building towards our next premiership and our capacity to challenge for silverware again.

"If we're brutally honest, in terms of the reality of it, we're unlikely to be challenging seriously this year.

"But it's selling to our members, supporters and wider football community that we're on the path in the right direction."