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Fresh from a thumping 63-point win over St Kilda, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has given the rest of the competition the strongest indication yet that his team is well-positioned to launch an assault on an historic third consecutive premiership in the second half of the season.
Hawthorn has taken a while to get going in season 2015, only managing to win consecutive games for the first time on Sunday evening after a stop-start beginning to the year.
But with a host of injured stars set to be available for selection following their bye next weekend, Clarkson was pleased that his playing list was looking the healthiest it had looked for some time.
"We'll have (Grant) Birchall and (Paul) Puopolo hopefully available after the break and (Matt) Spangher, (Ben) McEvoy ... (Will) Langford came back from injury on the weekend and played at VFL level too," Clarkson said.
"The competition for spots will be really important for us in the second half of the year."
However, with a few early-season bolters in West Coast and GWS occupying some of the top rungs of the ladder after 10 rounds, Clarkson was under no illusion as to how hard it would be to finish in the top four this year and agreed it would be a "fight to the death".
"We'll have a much greater judgment of the season when we get about 14 or 15 rounds in," he said.
"Round 10 gives you some indication, but sort of round 14 or 15 we'll have a fair indication of how it's going to shape itself later in the year."
Clarkson would have preferred his 6-4 Hawks, who are fifth on the ladder as of Sunday night, to have at least another win by this stage.
"It's a tough competition, we've lost four games by less than two goals," Clarkson said.
"So we've been right in games that we haven't gone quite over the line and the games that we have won we've won convincingly so we've got a really, really healthy percentage (155.2), hopefully that'll hold us in good stead – particularly if it becomes a real fight to the death in terms of who's going to make top four."
Clarkson described his team's clash with the Saints as a "strange sorta game" and he wasn't pleased with every aspect of the Hawks' performance despite the sizeable final margin.
"They had a little bit too much ball control for our liking," he said of St Kilda who ended up with 50 more disposals (406-356).
"Having said that we still scored really well and were able to restrict them to a pretty good score.
"They got some junk-time goals at the end ... for the bulk of the game to keep that side to seven goals was a pretty good effort."
He also praised speedsters Billy Hartung, Isaac Smith and Matt Suckling for picking up the slack in the running department with Brad Hill having an off-night.
"That's what we want to do, we want to share the workload and just have a lot of guys that can play and have the flexibility to play through a number of roles through our side," he said.
Clarkson wore a 'Freeze MND' beanie in his post-match press conference to help raise awareness about motor neurone disease and to support footy great Neale Daniher who is battling the condition and was a big influence on the triple premiership coach's career.