Lack of depth costing Hawthorn, says Clarkson

The Hawks are in the midst of their worst start to a season since 2010 and coach Alastair Clarkson says there’s a major reason why.

The Hawks face the 18th-placed Kangaroos next week. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson admits his side is being hurt by a lack of list depth and is struggling to cover the absence of numerous key players, following another disappointing performance against West Coast at the MCG on Sunday.

The Hawks were missing James Sicily (knee), Jack Gunston (back), Jaeger O’Meara (soreness), Shaun Burgoyne (ankle), Jon Ceglar (ankle) and Will Day (ankle) during their 38-point loss to the Eagles, who themselves were also missing a swath of top-end talent.

Hawthorn have now slumped to their worst start to a season since 2010.

“Gunston is a high-quality player, O’Meara is a high-quality player for us, Sicily is a high-quality player for us,” Clarkson said post-game.

“So in each part of the ground those guys are missing. (Denver) Grainger-Barras and Day are really emerging young players for us who were taken as first-round picks in the last two years and they’re both missing extended periods with injury.

“And then the complexity of it is that, for other reasons, guys that you recruited to your club that really should stiffen you up a little bit in terms of your depth with (Jon) Patton and (Tom) Scully and they, for various reasons, are no longer listed to our club.

“So just when we’re trying to find our way as a club, you need your depth.

“Lists have these difficulties from time to time in terms of their depth and the really good clubs cover it pretty well and we’re not covering it as well as we’d like at the minute.”

Clarkson has coached Hawthorn since 2005. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Clarkson reiterated his club’s desire to recruit a player in the mid-season draft, but warned Hawthorn supporters that pick wouldn’t be “the panacea” for the on-field struggles they were enduring.

The four-time premiership coach identified West Coast’s aerial dominance, particularly in Hawthorn’s forward line, on Sunday as the decisive factor in the contest.

“Right now we’re just doing some hard yards in terms of consistency of effort and they were able to control a lot of those aerial balls,” Clarkson said.

“It made it enormously difficult for us, we were under enormous heat over the course of the game and we just couldn’t get the territory to get the game played in our half unfortunately.”

A paltry 15,277 fans turned up to the Mother’s Day match, but Clarkson was philosophical about how his club can avoid such lowly attendance figures, two years after only drawing 14,636 on the same day at the same ground in 2019 against GWS.

“To only have 15,000 that’s a disappointing crowd number for our club, but swings and roundabouts, really,” he said.

“We get ourselves back up the ladder and playing good, consistent footy then we get one of the Friday night or Saturday fixtures rather than Sunday.”

West Coast fans had their collective hearts in their mouths when they saw their star spearhead Josh Kennedy finish the game with a big ice pack on his right calf, but coach Adam Simpson didn’t think it was a significant injury.

And the news got better for the Eagles with Simpson confirming that Jeremy McGovern, Tom Barrass, Liam Ryan, Mark Hutchings and Shannon Hurn would all be in the selection frame for their next game against Adelaide at Optus Stadium.

Much had been said about West Coast’s struggles away from Perth this year (they were 0-3 on the road prior to Sunday), but Simpson said the main focus against Hawthorn was to play “consistent football” which he conceded his team hadn’t done too often so far in 2021.

“We’ve had games we’ve won at home that’s been patchy,” Simpson said.

“It was important we had good effort today … I felt like we played more of a complete four-quarter performance today than we have in previous interstate trips.”