HAWTHORN'S depleted defence can cope with the mammoth task of shutting down Essendon's tall forwards on Friday night, according to Luke Breust.
 
The Hawks will head into the clash against their great rivals without first-choice full-back Brian Lake, who is serving a suspension from the Grand Final until round four, and injured centre half-back Ryan Schoenmakers.
 
It means Kyle Cheney (187cm) and Josh Gibson (189cm) will again hold down the key defensive posts against the Bombers' potent combination of Jake Carlisle (198cm) and rising star Joe Daniher (201cm).
 
Cheney and Gibson worked together to limit Brisbane Lions champion Jonathan Brown to four goals and seven marks in Hawthorn's 48-point round one triumph, and Breust has faith in his teammates to do the job against Essendon.
 
"Jonathan Brown's obviously a great player and a big target [and] I thought we did OK on him on the weekend, as well as the other talls that Brisbane had, so I'm sure (backline coach) Luke Beveridge will work with the defenders and work out the match-ups on Friday night," Breust said.
 
"(Daniher and Carlisle) are great players and even Patty Ambrose played a pretty good role for Essendon on Friday night as well, so they've got three talls down there that we'll have to match up on and work out."

 
At the other end of the ground, Hawthorn appears to have few areas of concern in the post-Lance Franklin era.
 
The Hawks booted 21 goals, coming from 10 individual goal-kickers, at Aurora Stadium on Saturday.
 
Breust and reigning Coleman medallist Jarryd Roughead each returned bags of five goals.
 
There were ominous signs from the reigning premiers – who were missing seven of their Grand Final side – as they kicked 12 of the last 17 goals to put the brakes on the Lions' second-half fightback.
 
With Cyril Rioli back from suspension, Breust believes the Hawks' forward setup will have another dimension on Friday night.
 
"The forward line's working reasonably well at the moment and did across the NAB (Challenge) series," Breust said.
 
"Roughead's obviously a great target up forward for us, but David Hale can go down there [and] we've seen what Ben McEvoy can do with him clunking them as well.
 
"Then you've got obviously Jack Gunston, Cyril will add another dimension this week and Paul Puopolo and myself, so we've got a good mix down there at the moment.
 
"Our trademark of being dangerous is what we aim to live by, and I think we try and do that most weeks."