I DON'T want to harp on too much about the weekend but, let's be honest, it was a missed opportunity.

Even though our supporters saw that we gave everything, there were some critical stages where some of the senior guys didn't seize the moment. We lacked some experience too.

A number of those critical stages came at the start of the game, where we should have kicked a couple of goals to put the Bulldogs under the pump.

Instead the Dogs took their opportunities, which really hurt us.

I was pretty disappointed with the way I started the game and how I delivered the ball to my teammates. I felt I let them down.

Hopefully I can redeem myself, starting this week. I'm going to be training pretty hard and working on my skills to get that right.

In these early rounds of the season it can be hard to find your touch and some players regain it quicker than others. But it's also a mental thing. Regardless of who they are, every player needs a bit of confidence to get going.

I've got confidence in my ability and when you have that you're willing to try different things. But I'd rather keep it simple for now and build on it.

It was good to play against one of the better teams in the competition to really see where we're at as a side. We're not too far off the pace.

And there's no use looking back and thinking, 'We should have done this, we should have done that'.

This time last season we were also one and one and preparing to play Hawthorn. They beat us that game after we led at three-quarter time but we got one back on them a bit later in the season.

The win in round 13 was very important for our form heading into the second half of 2008. The Hawks were up and coming and ripping teams apart but we stepped up to the plate and took them on.

We're going to have to lift even more on Sunday because they've improved so much since then.

Everyone's saying Hawthorn's undermanned but in reality they're a premiership side. They'll always be very hard to beat.

We've got a good record against them, but that doesn't really matter. Every year's a different year.

We have the belief we can play well against Hawthorn. Dean's got a good plan and when the boys execute that plan, tackle well and tackle hard, we usually go okay. But we need to use some initiative too.

Hawthorn's lost two games to start the season so we expect them to come out wanting to win this one more than ever.

They always come out pretty hard against us and we like to go in hard against them. It's going to be a tough game.

We don't want to lose two in a row either and we've got to win as many games as we can before we start our road trips after round 11.

Come Thursday, when we have our main session, blokes will want to be switched on and ready to go because our preparations will be pretty detailed from there.

If we get them right, we're right in the ball park.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.