JARRYD Roughead is adamant the Hawks' hopes for this season are not over despite their winless start to the year, which the captain admits has been "very un-Hawthorn like".
The Hawks slumped to their third straight defeat when they lost to the Gold Coast by 86 points on Sunday at Metricon Stadium.
It leaves the most dominant side of the past decade winless heading into their Easter Monday clash with Geelong, and in danger of falling well behind other finals aspirants.
Roughead, who kicked three goals for the Hawks in the shock defeat, said the club needed time to come together as it moves into a new era.
"It's very un-Hawthorn like. We still have to get through the initial parts of everyone fitting in and gelling, and not just from on-field but also off-field as well," Roughead said on Monday.
"We've got a lot of things going on and a lot of new faces around the club and it's going to take time. Let's worry about what happens in the next five to 10 weeks, and we'll see how we're going then."
The Hawks have had their worst start to a year since 2005 – coach Alastair Clarkson's first season in charge – but Roughead said they haven't given up on their year.
"We've got a week's break now until we play Geelong and we'll review the game like we would if we'd won and worry about getting back on the training track," he said.
"We've come up against three pretty good teams. It's not ideal to start 0-3 but there's still 19 weeks of the year to go and I'm not sitting here saying the season's done."
Roughead's comments echo those of Clarkson, who backed the Hawks to "crawl" their way up the ladder after losses to Essendon, Adelaide and the Suns.