Clarkson praises fit Hawks

Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has paid credit to his fitness staff for having the players primed for a four-quarter effort in Saturday's thumping of Collingwood at the MCG.

Coming off a six-day break, the Hawks finished all over the Magpies - who had two extra days up their sleeves after crushing Essendon on Anzac Day - with a sensational 10-goal final quarter which blew out the final margin to 65 points.

"Andrew Russell and Peter Birch did a first class job just looking after their conditioning over the course of the week," Clarkson told his post-match media conference.

"For us to be able to run the game out as well as we did in the second half is a great credit to those two guys who prepare our players so well."

"The professionalism of these guys … was pivotal to our win."

Clarkson said he didn't believe the final margin was a fair reflection of the difference between the teams.

And in typical Clarkson style, he played down the fact that he has genuine stars in Lance Franklin, Sam Mitchell, Luke Hodge, Brad Sewell and Jarryd Roughead - to name just a few - to complement a game plan that's been so carefully scrutinised in the media this week.

"To three-quarter time there was only three or four goals in it and the game just opened up in the last quarter which quite often it can do in a big contest like that," Clarkson said.

"We always had a buffer of two-to-three goals across the bulk of the game, but it just felt like we couldn't nail them as early as we would have liked."

"All we ask … is that we have 22 guys that contribute and play their role and for the bulk of the day today we had that and that will give us a great chance to win games of footy."

"We've done some pretty tough soul-searching over the course of the last three-and-a-half years to work out a style of play and wait for some of these lads to mature as players and we're finally getting some reward for that," he said.

"With victories comes greater scrutiny … and that's something that we'll have to prepare well for in the weeks to come."

Clarkson said he could see no problem in Franklin lining-up for the Dream Team in next week's Hall of Fame Tribute match where he has every prospect of bettering his six-goal haul against the Pies.

"If he's medically OK to play we would encourage our guys to play," Clarkson said.

"Chance (Bateman) probably won't, he was a late withdrawal today with a cracked bone in his hand - we just didn't want to run the risk of that becoming displaced."

"He'll probably miss another one or two games."

Luke Hodge's prospects of wearing the 'Big V' evaporated when he hobbled from the field after half-time with what appeared to be a nasty hamstring tear.

Clarkson said he expects Hodge's hammy is a 'two-to-three week' injury but would need to wait on scans.