Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell said his Hawks learned that they won’t get away with playing less than 120 minutes against the top sides in the competition.
The Hawks lost just their second game for the season on Thursday night, going down to Fremantle by 15 points.
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After a close start, Mitchell’s team took control of the game in the second quarter and led by 22 points late in the third term.
However, led by Caleb Serong and Luke Jackson, the Dockers controlled the last quarter, restricting the Hawks to just four clearances and four entries into their attack. Fremantle outscored Hawthorn 5.6 to 1.0 in that last term.
Mitchell admits that letting the opposition take control of centre bounces had become a worrying trend.
“We have had periods across the season, not last quarters, necessarily, but we’ve had periods where we’ve lost control of games, and we’ve had big runs of centre bounce against,” he said.
“So centre bounce, if you look at our season numbers, they’ll be okay. But we have had runs of centre bounce against, and that’s been a bit of an issue, and certainly reared its head tonight at the worst time.
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“We knew coming here to play against a side that’s fighting for the similar spots on the ladder that we are, we knew we were going to be up against it, and we were going to have to have to play 120 minutes.
“Unfortunately, 90 won’t get it done against the Dockers. And we learned that lesson.
“Hit us right in the face, to be fair.”
Hawthorn has been involved in a few close games this season already. The Hawks beat Geelong by one point in round 4 and Port Adelaide by three points in Round 6.
But in the past two weeks, including Thursday’s loss to Fremantle, they haven’t been able to claim wins, having walked away with a draw against Collingwood last week.
Jack Gunston, who had kicked five goals in the first half against the Dockers, kicked a sixth in the last quarter, but only managed two disposals. Nick Watson had only one.
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The Dockers eight more clearances in the final term, and 19 more inside 50 entries. The only Hawks players that got to 10 possessions in the final quarter were defenders Josh Battle, James Sicily and Karl Amon.
Mitchell said his side went away from the way they wanted to play.
“We’ve been involved in a lot of close games so far this year, and we weren’t good enough tonight,” he said.
“We’re working a little bit of our method around what we need to do late in games, but also the mentality of the moment.
“We went away from a few things that we were meant to be doing across that last 15 minutes of the game. These are things that are going to cost us big games, and we shot ourselves in the foot with the way we set the game up tonight, late in the game.”