HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has praised the work rate and belief of his players after they put aside a poor start to run down Port Adelaide in Launceston on Saturday.

The Hawks trailed by 38 points early in the second term after they looked well out of sorts in the first, but outscored the Power in each of the remaining quarters to record the 15-point win.

“We weren’t playing good footy and we were turning the footy over and making some silly errors and Port were controlling the ball, but we worked our way back into the contest which is a real credit to our boys,” Clarkson said.

“It’s probably got a fair bit to do with the quality of the players and the belief in one another.

“I think there is a genuine belief that if we keep doing the things that we do well consistently from one contest to the next contest, from quarter to the next quarter and then from one game to the next game, then our guys have got the belief that on most occasions they’ll win games of footy; that was the case today.”

Port’s midfielders were often first to the ball and its forwards were finding plenty of space early and Clarkson admitted his initial use of a zone defence to try and block their leading space had back-fired.

“It didn’t work very well for us when Port Adelaide was able to win so much of the footy,” he said.

“We got a little bit better as the game wore on, but that was mainly due to us being able to control the ball through the middle of the ground a little bit better.

“Port jumped out to a bolter like they did [in round 20] last year down here and we just slowly pegged them back in that game as well and fortunately today we were in front when the siren went.”

The win is just the club’s second in its last 10 encounters with the Power. Clarkson admitted his former club had inflicted more pain than most during the current playing group’s formative years, but pointed to two wins out of the last three as a sign of progress made.   

“The wheel’s turned a little bit, we’ve got a little bit more quality in our list, we’ve got a bit more experience in our players and we expect to be more competitive against sides like Port Adelaide,” he said.

“We think we’ve started to make some ground on the really good sides in the competition.”

Clarkson was delighted with the competitive efforts of his two ruckman, Simon Taylor and Robert Campbell, who blunted the effectiveness of Port’s imposing ruck tandem of Brendon Lade and Dean Brogan.

He said it was too early to determine the severity of the hamstring injury sustained by Brent Guerra, but admitted it was highly unlikely he would take part in next week’s match against Melbourne.