FOR A large portion of Saturday's blockbuster clash with Geelong Alastair Clarkson's hard-at-it Hawthorn team looked to have resurrected its premiership defence, but the coach was left to lament missed opportunities after an agonising final term capitulation.

The Hawks held a 28-point lead early in the last quarter only to see the Cats storm home with the last five goals of the match.

Jimmy Bartel ultimately broke Hawks' fans hearts with a behind after the siren to give his side a thrilling one-point victory and leave Clarkson to ponder what might have been.

"We were playing a good side and they're always going to come at you, but we just didn't take our chances in the last quarter as much as we could have," he said.

"We didn't move the ball as quickly as we did in the first three quarters. We were really pleased with the way we played throughout the course of the day and just let it slip in the last 10 minutes of the game.

"If you do that against a quality opponent sometimes you might just hang and sometimes you lose and unfortunately for us today we lost.

"Despite losing the game we were pleased with what we were able to show out there today; we're back to playing our attacking aggressive footy.

"We won in nearly every area of the ground except on the scoreboard unfortunately for us, but we'll take an enormous amount of positives out of the game and move on to Port Adelaide next week."

The Hawks were guilty of missing a few elementary shots for goal on the day, but Clarkson wasn't looking to apportion blame for the fadeout.

"The Cats nailed some good goals," he admitted.

"In different games gone by it's been the other way around where we've kicked straight and Geelong haven't kicked so accurately. It's swings and roundabouts; sometimes they go your way and sometimes they don't.

"Unfortunately for us we were on the bitter end of that today, but we take a fair bit out of the game. We feel like our run, carry and teamwork is back in our play now.

"Every time you lose you're disappointed, but I was actually pretty proud of the guys and the way they went about it today."

Clarkson could see the Cats' momentum building from his coaches box late in the game, but felt there was little he could do to halt the run.

"Coaches don't do an enormous amount in the coaches box any way," he said.

"They're very theatrical and get a lot of vision put on them in the box as if they're the gurus, but most of the good coaching work is done in the pre-season and throughout the course of the week.

"You change things about a little bit on game day, but your structures and processes are what win you games of footy and for the bulk of today ours were pretty good, but we just fell away a little it on the last part of the game."

The Hawks are now precariously placed outside the top eight with eight wins with just five rounds remaining, but Clarkson brushed aside questions on his side's chances of defending its premiership come September.

"We'll just take it one week at a time," he said.

"We've got Port Adelaide next week and if we play with that sort of endeavour we know we'll be right in with a show against any side in the competition."