After watching his team’s unsuccessful last-quarter charge against Geelong at the MCG, Clarkson admitted his side was lucky to be within striking distance of the Cats at the final change on Friday night.
“We came here wanting to win the game, and that’s the case with every side we put out on the park and we’re disappointed we didn’t get the result,” Clarkson said after the match.
“Geelong were just a little bit better than us when it mattered the most and we need to improve from that.”
Mark Thompson’s side failed to make the Hawks pay with several missed opportunities in front of goal in the first half and the reigning premiers swooped, almost stealing the match.
Geelong won the season-opener 15.21 (111) to 16.7 (103) but there were plenty of positives for Hawthorn, who were missing seven members of last year’s premiership team.
Clarkson said his team gave the Cats too much easy footy early in the clash, which proved costly in the wash-up.
The Cats looked the better team early on and the Hawks coach agreed his side was a step off the pace for the majority of the opening half.
“It’ll be a difficult game to assess, really,” he said.
“I thought when the whips were cracking early, I thought Geelong were better at hunting the footy than what we were.
“They were a bit more experienced and stronger around the clinches in the early part of the game.
“[It was] great that we were able to get ourselves back into the contest … but the damage was done early on.”
Geelong fielded a vastly more experienced unit, with just two variations from its grand final side.
Hawthorn, meanwhile, was blooding three debutants – Ryan Schoenmakers, Matthew Suckling and Brendan Whitecross.
“They were playing against a quality opponent so at different stages they all acquitted themselves okay,” Clarkson said.
“They made a lot of mistakes just like a lot of our players did in the heat of battle … I’m not sure what the crowd was but that was a great crowd for those three young lads to play in front of and we’ll continue to give young blokes an opportunity at our footy club.”
One man who caused the Hawks problems most of the night, but particularly early, was Geelong champ Gary Ablett.
Clarkson said the Hawks did try to tag the champion Cat but he said it was hard to know where to draw the line when assessing Geelong’s midfield.
“If you want to have a real negating and defensive type of attitude, you’d need to lock down about five or six of them,” he said.
“We’ve won games of footy, like we did in the grand final, where he had a pretty significant influence in terms of possessions but they didn’t win the game.
“So when Ablett has 35 it always doesn’t guarantee they win but it usually means that they do … he’s a hard man to stop.”
