HAVING reached a fourth consecutive Grand Final the long way round, Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson says he won't be rushed in turning his attention to a potentially history making decider.

Just one win away from a three-peat, a feat not achieved since the Brisbane Lions side of the early 2000s, Clarkson said it was too early to know if this year's Grand Final week would be different to the past two, where the Hawks have had semi-final week off. 

"I haven't given it any thought. All our energy went into this game," Clarkson told reporters after the Hawks overcame a gallant Fremantle side.

"We'll sit down and have a chat over the course of the next 24 hours, address our playing group and any niggles or whatever, and work out the best way to prepare over the next eight days," he said.

Most of the Hawks will fly out for Melbourne almost immediately on a late flight, and Clarkson won't be staying for Saturday's West Coast-North Melbourne game. 

He'll be leaving that to his assistants.

"I'll be going back [to Melbourne] tomorrow but some of our coaching staff will stay over here," he said.

Clarkson said his side had learnt many lessons from their loss to the Eagles at Domain Stadium a fortnight ago, and put them to good use in a brutal clash with the Dockers.

"There's too many to go through, the depth of them all, but our preparation for the game in terms of our tactics, the mindset of our playing group, that resilience that we demonstrated tonight, and demonstrated in the Adelaide final last week - for some reason we didn't have that in the West Coast game," he said. 

"It was slippery that night and we slipped, we had the wrong footwear. We just didn't prepare for the shape of the oval very well."

"We did all those things a hell of a lot better this week."