ALASTAIR Clarkson says Hawthorn is more likely to keep its team together in the final round than rest players ahead of the finals despite the challenge of three games in 13 days.

Clarkson said they wouldn't concern themselves with the idea a win this week against Geelong could allow for the management of players against the injury-hit Pies next Friday night.

But he indicated he would prefer to keep the team stable going into its first final, which is likely to be against the Cats, than mix it around by resting players.

"We'll just deal with this week and worry about next week when it comes," Clarkson said on Friday.

"We're pretty mindful of trying to keep our group together and settle our side for finals too.

"We'll discuss those sorts of things. If players are sore and unable to train properly leading into a game, they don't play.

"If they're training fully, they're likely to play."

Clarkson acknowledged the availability of Brian Lake, who missed the Hawks' round five loss to the Cats, would help them in defence against Tom Hawkins.

Hawkins kicked three goals in the last quarter of the Easter Monday clash - five for the game – to lead his side to victory.

He said the omission of Ryan Schoenmakers at the expense of Matt Spangher was more to do with ensuring they weren't caught too tall against the Cats' forward line.

"It's all pretty tight. It's not so much that one's better than the other - we just can't play all our tall players," he said.

"We haven't been in that fortunate position for a long period of time.

"It's quite unusual we've got so many [tall defenders] available to us and we just don't want to go in too tall against Geelong - they're a quick side and can run hard and we don't want to have too many taller players that can't cover the ground as well as the smaller guys."

Clarkson said the Hawks weren't looking ahead to the likely match up with the Cats in a qualifying final in two weeks' time and instead were focusing on working out how to turn the tables against them now.

"We just try to win every game we play and we're going to be trying to do that again against the Cats," he said.

"We can't afford to be too flippant, we haven't got a great record against the Cats over the last three or four years so we're still trying to work out the best way to go about them and trying to defeat them on a regular basis.

"We haven't been able to do that for a long period of time so we'll just play them and let the other stuff work itself out.

"Last year we played Sydney in the last round of the season and then played them in the first final.

"You've got to deal with it, it's just the way things unfold from time to time."

Matt Suckling was subbed out of their loss to Fremantle last Sunday with an ankle injury.

He didn't do much of Friday's light session and was wearing runners.