HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson said his young side were overawed by Shaun Burgoyne's 400th game, after conceding nine consecutive goals to Port Adelaide across nearly a half of footy.
While the Hawks rallied after the main break, it was too little too late as the Power cruised to a 34-point win.
HAWKS v POWER Full match coverage and stats
"Port are a good side, so we don't want to take anything away from those guys, they were terrific, particularly early, they applied a lot of pressure," Clarkson said.
"It's hard to say, but it looked like we were overwhelmed with the occasion, to be fair. We made so many errors with the ball.
"Some of it was to do with Port's pressure, of course, but some of it was just to do with us being too frantic with the footy when we had a chance to get composure with the ball.
"If anything, strangely enough, it was like our lads were trying too hard, we lost our balance in general play and structure just by [being] bees to the honeypot, trying too hard to go in and get the ball."
Clarkson said he was hopeful to regain Mitch Lewis next week after the key forward performed strongly at training on Saturday, following a month on the sidelines with concussion from a boxing session at training.
But there is a chance Jack Gunston's season could be over, with the veteran running out of time following an extended lay-off due to a back injury.
"He's missed so much footy now, while he's starting to move a little more freely from that back injury that he had, we've now got a conditioning issue as to how well prepared he is to play a game of footy," Clarkson said.
"We're starting to run out of time, we've got seven games to go. There may come some time where we say, listen, this season's been a bit of a train wreck for him unfortunately, and we may have to get him ready for 2021."
Port Adelaide is well positioned in fourth spot two-thirds of the way through the season, and now looks set to regain some highly talented players, although Kane Farrell is suspected to have ruptured his right ACL.
Zak Butters (knee and ankle) and Xavier Duursma (knee) have not played since round four this year but will return in the coming weeks.
"Zak will push for next Thursday. He got through the [SANFL] game well today. I'm not being in any way disrespectful to the competition, but Zak Butters is an AFL player every day of the week, he just needed to get a game under his belt to give him confidence that he can play," coach Ken Hinkley said.
"He won't be perfect if he comes in next week or the week after, but he'll be there, making us better for every week that he's in the team.
"[Duursma will] play next week in the SANFL, all things being equal, and we'll be really pleased to have him back as well.
"Tom Clurey (broken jaw), Jackson Mead (spleen), played in the SANFL today, we had Zak playing in the SANFL today, so we're starting to get some of our pieces back.
"Unfortunately, we lose Kane (Farrell) tonight for the long-term, but the challenges of this year – I think we've had nine or 10 surgeries as a football club this year already, which is quite remarkable."
