We gave up, says Clarkson

ALASTAIR Clarkson has admitted Hawthorn shut down its finals aspirations just a month into the 2017 season.

Clarkson conceded his players lost their “hunger” in a disastrous 0-4 start to the year after six years of brilliant finals footy. But rather than bust a gut to attempt to scrape into eighth, the year was invested into playing kids and experimenting with positional changes.

As a result the Hawks discovered James Sicily, Ryan Burton and Blake Hardwick as defenders and blooded emerging kids such as Conor Glass.

In an interview to be played on Fox Footy during today’s clash against the Western Bulldogs, Clarkson said this year “there’s a fire burning among the playing group”.

“Probably going 0-4 like we did early in the year, strangely Sydney were 0-6 — we took different paths,’’ he said.

“We’d been there and done that before in 2010 when we were 1-6 after seven rounds and worked so hard to get ourselves back into the season.

“But you spend so much energy getting back into finals and you’re kicked out pretty quickly and that happened to Sydney.

“We took a different approach this time at 0-4. We thought we could work really hard to get ourselves back into the season, but by the end of the year you’re buggered.

“Or the reality is we probably need to invest in our next generation and so that was the decision we made. We wanted to win, but we weren’t going to push some of these players back from injury.”

Speaking for the first time about Cyril Rioli’s tough summer, Clarkson said his father’s heart attack was complicated by the family’s medical issues.

“He had a big hiccup over the summer. His dad had surgery following a heart attack and that really knocked Cyril around because his uncle Maurice passed away with a heart attack and his uncle Sebby had the same,” Clarkson said.

“It just seemed to be that this period from 50-60 years of age, at which a lot of his uncles and father is at the present time, was a real high-risk area and time for his family.

“He was just wondering what his purpose in life was, to be a footballer and is that with Hawthorn or is it to be a family member and that really tore him apart for a long, long time so we gave him the space he needed.”

You spend so much energy getting back into finals and you’re kicked out pretty quickly — ALASTAIR CLARKSON