The Hawks won by 116 points over a severely depleted Fremantle side, and with a finals berth now assured, Clarkson was relieved and delighted.
“We had a job to do and that was to come and win a game of footy,” he said post-match.
“Fremantle have consolidated their spot in the top eight and we hadn’t and our clear goal was to win the game irrespective of what the opposition was today.
“We controlled the contest from start to finish apart from a patch in the last quarter so we were pleased to get that result.”
Asked whether he thought the almost farcical nature of the fixture against Fremantle - which had eight important players from last week’s team missing because of ‘soreness’ - had done anything to damage the reputation of AFL football in Tasmania, Clarkson pointed out just how one-eyed the local support is for his club.
“We’ve got a lot of supporters down here and they love seeing Hawthorn win,” he said.
“It’s the first time we’ve kicked over 20 goals on this ground and people love the spectacle of Australian rules because a lot of goals are kicked.”
The 24.11 (155) to 5.9 (39) victory was not only the Hawks’ biggest score in Tasmania, it was also their greatest winning margin and signalled a huge turnaround from the early-season hole the Hawks found themselves in after a string of early-season losses.
“We’ve worked really hard as a club to get ourselves back into the season and now we’ve established that we will play finals,” he said.
Despite Saturday’s cakewalk, Clarkson believed there would be plenty of positives to take from the match.
“Every game you play, you’re trying to work on your processes and systems so you can compete against the very best in the competition.
“I’m sure a lot of our players will get a lot of confidence out of this game.”
The Hawks will now turn their attention to a clash with ladder-leaders Collingwood at the MCG next Saturday and Clarkson believes that fixture will be a good measure of his team’s September chances.
“It’s great now we’ve consolidated our spot in the finals to really test ourselves against the benchmark of the competition and just to see where we’re at,” he said.
A win against the Magpies would give the Hawks a good chance of playing a home final, something Clarkson said he would obviously prefer than playing interstate in the first week of the finals.
“Every team likes to play in their home state, sleep in their own bed, and they prepare better,” he said.
“I think every team in the comp would have a better winning percentage at home than they would away.
“Where you actually play doesn’t really matter. You just go out and battle as fiercely as you can and if you’re good enough you win those games of footy no matter where they’re played.”
