The reality of taking on the “best side in the competition” this weekend has helped Hawthorn avoid remaining caught up in the emotion of a thrilling one-point win over Geelong on Easter Monday.

Hawks coach Sam Mitchell was pleased his team had little time to bask in the glory of beating the Cats and instead focus on the tough task of handing the top-of-the-table Western Bulldogs their first defeat of the season in Saturday night’s Gather Round battle at Adelaide Oval.

“The tight turnaround and playing the Dogs probably helps,” Mitchell said on Thursday when asked if his team had been able to “calm down” after Monday’s epic MCG battle.

“You finish Monday with high emotion, but by the time you get to Tuesday lunchtime, you’re already thinking ahead and pretty heavily motivated.

“You’re playing the only undefeated team left in the competition. It’s a great opportunity for us to test ourselves against the best side of the competition at this point, so it’s pretty easy to move on quickly.

“The only thing is that everyone you run into still wants to talk backwards, and we need to be disciplined making sure that we’re thinking forwards.”

Mitchell said the Bulldogs “were doing a lot right”.

“Their stoppage game is first-class and has been for a long period of time. Their marking power is first-rate across the ground … so there’s a fair bit of preparation that goes into a game that’s against as high quality team as the Bulldogs,” the Hawks mentor said.

“They’re on top of a ladder for a reason. They’ve had some pretty tough games. They’ve (beaten) Adelaide away and they beat Brisbane away, so they’ve had some big games that they’ve been able to win.

“We know we’re going to have to be at our best.”

Mitchell said planning ways to stop the threat of Bulldogs star Marcus Bontempelli “keeps you up at night”.

“Bontempelli, just generationally, he’s just as good a player as we’ve seen for such a long time,” he said. adding that the Hawks also had to nullify the Bulldogs’ “tall targets” in Sam Darcy and Aaron Naughton

“We know that they’ve got some skills that we need to take away, but by the same token, we’ve got some strengths that we need to make sure that we can bring to the party to make sure they’re challenged by the way we go about it as well.

“We feel like our form line is pretty solid, but we’re going to have to be close to our best.”

Originally published as Hawthorn happy to move on from epic win to face ‘best side in the competition’