IT'S A rare Hawthorn performance that can be summed up with the phrase 'bad kicking is bad football', but Alastair Clarkson did just that after Saturday night’s loss to the Sydney Swans.
Clarkson had just watched his team kick 9.15 to lose a thrilling Grand Final rematch by four points, the loss made harder to take by the fact the Swans (11.7) had six fewer scoring shots.
Click here to watch Alastair Clarkson's full press conference
And in the last quarter the normally clinical Hawks missed targets – both in front of goal and in general play – that they could normally hit with their eyes closed.
Even their best kicks were not immune.
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First, dead-eye spearhead Jack Gunston hit the post with a set shot at the 16-minute mark.
Six minutes later Matt Suckling botched an attempted pass from Hawthorn's 50m line, kicking the ball into Swans defender Dane Rampe, with the visitors able to clear the ball and start a chain of play that finished with a Luke Parker goal that put them five points up.
Then Luke Breust, who last year equalled Tony Lockett's record of 29 goals without a miss, missed a set shot from 35m out dead in front.
"I think we've all had a junior football coach that's told us bad kicking is bad football," Clarkson said.
"We kicked 9.15. Even in the first quarter it looks like the Swans have got tremendous ascendancy, but it's just simply because of goalkicking conversion.
"By five minutes into the second quarter it's 1.6 to 6.1, they took their chances, we didn't take ours," Clarkson said.
"And then we had some chances to convert some opportunities late in the game that we would normally ice and we didn't take them."
But Clarkson sprung to the defence of Breust, Gunston and Suckling, saying their last-quarter mistakes were out of character.
On Breust and Gunston's missed set shots, Clarkson said: "They've been tremendous players for us for a long period of time and it's just unfortunate that both in the one quarter happened to miss shots that they would usually convert.
"You've got to take the good with the bad. We've copped the bad tonight in terms of that but, gee, for so long they've been so good for us, those two boys."
When asked about Suckling's turnover, Clarkson reminded reporters of the defender's outstanding pass that set up a Cyril Rioli goal in the third quarter.
The Hawks coach also said he would continue to encourage Suckling and his teammates to take risks with their kicking.
"We all cry foul when it doesn't work out for us but we've got to continue to back ourselves," Clarkson said.
"If we go into our shell and worry about not being able to hit those sort of kicks then we play stagnant, slow football and that's not the way that we play our footy."
Clarkson said Saturday night's game had felt like a replay of the Swans' 2012 Grand Final win over the Hawks, with the Swans again getting "most" of their goals from turnovers.
"We turned the ball over in the middle of the ground and they got slingshot easy goals out the back," he said.
"It was the 2012 Grand Final all over again, that's the way that they scored on that particular day too.
"We're usually a lot better with the ball, (the) slippery conditions maybe contributed to it a little bit, but by and large we pride ourselves on being better than what we were through the middle of the ground tonight."
Late in the first quarter of Saturday night's game, Hawks defender Brian Lake appeared to reinjure the left knee that had sidelined him for the previous three rounds.
Lake briefly went down in the rooms for treatment but returned soon afterwards and played out the game.
"He should be OK but I haven't spoken to the doctors," Clarkson said.
"When they go back on, you usually think that they're going to be OK."
