Both Rioli and Puopolo missed Saturday's scrappy 19-point victory against Carlton at Aurora Stadium, a win which was Hawthorn's ninth in a row, and preserved their two-game lead atop the AFL ladder.

While Puopolo's absence with a hip complaint was noted at selection on Thursday night, star Rioli was a late omission on Saturday with quad tightness despite flying to the Apple Isle. The four-time premiership hero's place in the side was handed to youngster Blake Hardwick, who made his senior debut.

Despite going goalless in the second quarter and being threatened in the third term by the Blues, the Hawks did enough to extend their winning streak in Launceston to 19, and remain unbeaten against Carlton since 2005. Their only loss for the day was one of Tim O'Brien's teeth, with the emerging forward losing a tooth in a third-quarter incident.

Given the blustery conditions in Launceston and having again fielded a side which featured plenty of youth, Clarkson was happy.

"[I'm] pleased that we got the win. It was pretty tough conditions as you'd expect," Clarkson said. "It was a pretty tough game.

"We had a pretty young side in a sense. In terms of one-to-four year players, we had more playing in the game than Carlton did. Everyone talks about Carlton being a young side. We were actually a little bit more inexperienced than they were at the bottom end.

"We get an opportunity to give those guys more footy. Hardwick plays his first game for the club which is exciting for us, and we should have Rioli and Puopolo back in the side next week.

"This year we've had to dig a bit deeper into our younger guys, and they've acquitted themselves pretty well without being spectacular."

Clarkson said that Rioli had missed the game as a precaution. "He was just tight in the quad. We didn't want to take a punt with him. He flew down, we thought he was going to be OK. He got scanned on Thursday, it didn't show anything.

"We thought he'd be OK, he trained yesterday, he just didn't feel quite right. There's no point taking the risk. We put ourselves in a good position where we don't have to take punts with our players, we don't want to. If they're right enough to play then they play, but if they've got a little issue, we'll do our best to keep them as fresh as we possibly can."

Hardwick had just five disposals on debut, and missed a couple of shots at goal, but Clarkson nevertheless spoke spoke positively of the teenager's showing.

"He was pretty exciting for us at different stages. He'll learn enormously from the game he's played. He acquitted himself very well," the coach said.

"We knew about the Rioli thing late last night, so we were able to get his family down on a flight this morning."

Kaiden Brand returned to the field after a first-quarter collision, but Clarkson said the young defender is likely to be assessed by the Hawks' medicos.

While pleased with his side's pluck, Blues coach Brendon Bolton lamented missed chances as they fell to a seventh straight loss.

"We're a team that needs to keep evolving. We think by and large we're giving a lot of effort, trying really hard to," Bolton said.

"But as I said last week, we need to be a team that learns and evolves to be able to hurt the opposition when we get our opportunities.

"We're doing a lot right. We would have won the tackle count, we would have won the centre bounce clearances, so yeah we're on the right track in terms of effort, there's no doubt about that."

Bolton said he remained hopeful of regaining captain Marc Murphy from an ankle injury before the end of the season.