HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has compared his side's underwhelming kicking inside 50 on Friday night to a golfer failing to finish off their work on the green.

The Hawks managed only two marks inside 50 in the opening half – both shallow entries within seconds of each other – despite having 35 entries in that period. 

BOMBERS HOME AGAINST HAWKS Full match coverage and stats

They finished with five more inside 50s than Essendon by night's end, yet trailed by 38 points halfway through the final term before going down by 19 points. 

The Bombers' pair of All Australian defenders, Michael Hurley and Cale Hooker, feasted on Hawthorn in taking 12 marks apiece.

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"We spoke during the week about the key pillars in the Essendon defence, in Hooker and Hurley, and the manner in which you need to take the ball inside 50," Clarkson told reporters. 

"If you just kick it high and straight, it's going to play straight into their hands and we just did that too much in the early parts of the game.  

"I think we had 19 inside 50s and we didn't take a mark in the first quarter inside 50. 

"That's not a great reflection of your ball use, and unfortunately that meant we were able to score only two goals, when, perhaps, that type of inside-50 dominance should have you kicking four or five goals at the very least." 

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Clarkson said he knew at half-time it was likely the "bleeding" would come after the wasted opportunities, which went to script in a five-goal-to-two third quarter that proved the difference. 

Essendon won the centre clearances 7-1 for the term, which the four-time premiership coach described as a "spanking", after the Bombers trailed 8-4 in the first half.

WATCH Alastair Clarkson's full post-match media conference

It was halfway through that pivotal quarter that Clarkson abandoned his experiment of using usual-defender James Sicily as a forward. 

Sicily was useful enough in attack – and set up a Ricky Henderson goal right before he switched ends – but he wasn't his usual dominant self. 

The move followed the Hawks dropping promising key forward Mitch Lewis and again ignoring veteran Jarryd Roughead, but Clarkson felt it wouldn't have mattered who was inside 50 on the night.

"We've been finding it difficult to kick ourselves a score. We haven't been able to kick over 100 points for the season to date," he said.

"We've played 12 games now and haven't been able to do that, so 'Sis' going forward, he is a very capable forward… 

"It's hard, because we want him at both ends. We thought we'd take a punt … but we just couldn't move the ball in a manner that allowed us to get a really good look at any sort of target inside 50." 

Clarkson said he would "persevere" with seeing whether Sicily was the answer to Hawthorn's scoring woes, but stopped short of guaranteeing he would be there next week. 

He also conceded it would be "tough" for the Hawks to qualify for this year's finals as they slipped to a 5-7 win-loss record.

"We'd need everything to go right for us, but it's not about that necessarily for us," Clarkson said. 

"We've always said it's about putting together a side that can best place ourselves, so we can be in (flag) contention at some point in the next two or three years.

"That can happen very quickly or it can take some time. We'll just keep working through that. 

"Part of that is what we're doing with our forward line – just trying to find out what our best mix is – and we might have to take a little bit of pain to work that out but we're prepared to do that."