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BRIAN Lake wants his football future decided in the next six weeks so he can focus on Hawthorn's finals campaign.
The veteran fullback is out of contract at the end of this year, but is keen to play on into a 15th season.
And with the Hawks eyeing a premiership three-peat, the 2013 Norm Smith medallist hopes to have a new deal sorted before finals.
"You'd like to get it done reasonably soon," Lake told AFL.com.au.
"You don't want to leave it to the last game of the year, because you do have to work out things. If football's not that, you've obviously then got to get a job somewhere.
"If it's down at Centrelink and putting my paperwork in, I'll have to get down there and get that done pretty quickly.
"So, yeah, you'd like to find out before finals just to get that out the way and you can worry about finals when they come."
Lake, who turns 34 in February, has played 45 games for Hawthorn since he was traded from the Western Bulldogs for picks 21 (Nathan Hrovat) and 43 (traded to West Coast for Koby Stevens) at the end of 2012.
It's been a dream move for the 195cm defender, who's played in back-to-back flags and 38 wins in brown and gold.
Lake recently said his body felt the best it had for the past five years and he still has the desire to compete at the elite level.
"I'm still enjoying the game and the body's feeling really good. I'd like to play on, but I think it's out of my hands a little bit. The only way I can help the situation is keep performing on game day," he said.
The 242-gamer has shackled big-name forwards such as Tom Hawkins, Travis Cloke and Kurt Tippett in his 13 matches this year, with no signs of his form dropping off despite calf and knee concerns over the past 18 months.
Lake has also seen off younger challengers to remain the Hawks' strong man in the gym and can deadlift more than a mammoth 200kg – helping him grapple with those gorilla forwards.
But he said refining his training regime had helped revitalise his battered body.
"Training has changed, just probably more the workload. You're doing more quality work at my age, and a lot of other guys are on the same sort of program," Lake said.
Changing clubs has had an added bonus too, with the old Dog playing on the softer MCG more often than Etihad Stadium and training at the more forgiving Waverley surface instead of Whitten Oval.
"We've got a really soft ground down here at Waverley. We got it fixed at the end of 2013 I think it was. We got the whole ground resurfaced, which cost a fair bit of cash," Lake said.
"I reckon that's one of the things, and a couple of tweaks in the weights room, but nothing much, has probably helped me recover a lot better from games and takes that wear and tear out of you.
"That's so crucial when you're 33 or 32 years old … and probably taking a little bit of weight off as well helps."
