HAWTHORN coach Sam Mitchell wasn't getting carried away about his side's premiership chances after booking a home preliminary final but admitted it produced a game style against Fremantle he feels can beat the best.

Mitchell was beaming with pride following the Hawks' upset 32-point win away to the Dockers on Thursday night which was underlined by unrelenting pressure forcing turnovers and an intense workrate to capitalise upon them.

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Mitchell's Hawks lost to Geelong by five goals in last year's preliminary final and bowed out narrowly to Port Adelaide in the semi-finals in 2024.

This side, however, has never been better placed for a premiership assault, producing a full four-quarter display of intense pressure to stun the minor premier on its home turf. Mitchell was rapt with his side's ability to play that brand on the big stage against a top side.

"(The pressure) it's by design," Mitchell said. "We'd love to play like that all the time. You can't always get it done.

"We feel like we've worked for a long time to play the best sides and build a game style that's suited for this sort of game. We haven't always got it right.

"You watch some of our games across the season and our pressure has fallen away and we've been a bit off.

"I thought tonight the things that mattered in the game that don't hit the scoresheet, they're the things we liked."

When asked about his side's mentality for the preliminary final, Mitchell reiterated his desire to play a game style that can match it with the best.

"We got to the prelim last year, we didn't make it (to the Grand Final)," he said. "We weren't good enough, so we need to be able to perform consistently against the best teams.

"And preliminary final weekend, there'll only be the best teams there, so we've got a spot, but there'll be three other teams by the time we play, and the pressure is going to be equal on both teams because both teams are playing for the same thing. In a sense, I can't wait. But there is a part of me that says, just give me 24 hours to enjoy this."

The Hawks will fly back to Melbourne on Friday, before enjoying the weekend off, returning to training on Monday, but Mitchell wasn't looking too far ahead.

"I'd love to have all my ducks in a row on what I'm thinking for the next step," he said.

"We don't know who we'll be playing, we don't know what day we'll be playing. The only thing we know is that there's still two wins to go.

"We fully understand you don't play this game and coach this game to get to preliminary finals. We've got bigger games in front of us."

Despite the margin, Mitchell revealed he was still fearing a Fremantle comeback until the final few minutes of the game. He labelled it a "genuine final" full of intensity and praised his players.

"I'm just so proud of the boys to play so consistently for so long," he said. "You have to against the best teams. They're one of them, they've been the best team all year.

"We know it would take every minute of the game to be able to put them away because of how quickly they can score. The relentless pressure that we had on them all game was what we thought would be required.

"Full credit to the players for being able to produce that level of effort for that long."

Mitchell was glowing in his summation of his players across all three lines, particularly hailing his key backs James Sicily, Josh Battle and Tom Barrass for shutting down Freo's triple threat.

Nick Watson was a livewire up forward, finishing with two goals and creating plenty more, finishing with a game-high nine score involvements and almost pulling off a worldie from the boundary.

"Oh, he's fun to watch, isn't he?" Mitchell said about Watson. "When he handballed it to himself and created that goal, I was thinking, I'm just so glad he plays for us.

"But I think with Nick, he handles who he is really well. He's so young and he's so recognisable. And across my career I've seen other players like that, with 'Crawf' (Shane Crawford) in my early days. Lance Franklin was like it. 'Nic Nat' (Naitanui) was like that when I was at West Coast, and now Wiz, where they're bigger than the game sometimes.

"The way he handles fans and all of that, I just got so much admiration for how he goes about it, and he's pretty unflustered by it all. I was rapt with this game. He's a star."

In the midfield, Will Day was another standout, finishing with a team-high 14 contested possessions, in what was his first final having missed the previous two campaigns due to injury.

"He's so resilient," Mitchell said. "He's been through so much.

"Imagine his self-doubt when he wakes up this morning, thinking, ‘I've never been on this stage. Am I going to be OK?' When most of the other boys have.

"Not just that, but to play to perform at the level that he did. He showed it more than I did, but I felt exactly the way he looked after the game."