UP IN THE AIR

Clarkson: no timeframe for Hawks’ revival

HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson believes it’s hard to put a time-frame on how long it will take for the Hawks to rise up the ladder yet again.

It comes after Hawks President Jeff Kennett said he believes Hawthorn will be back in premiership contention by 2023. The Hawks are currently 17th having only won two games from their opening eight and have missed the finals the past two seasons but Clarkson said that a bounce can happen quicker than expected.

“It’s remarkable just how quickly or how slow it can be,” Clarkson said.

“For some clubs it takes forever and some clubs can spike up really quickly, I don’t think there was a football follower in the game that thought Sydney were going to bounce as quickly as they have with some of the injection of their youth. “Who knows what can happen, it all depends on how healthy those players are when they come in and whether they’re ready for senior AFL footy and even if they are they can come in and have an impact,

“This is the thing, you can change it around really quickly if you have the right culture and the right vision at your club and who knows. No one knows the answer to it, not the coach, not the president, not a football supporter — all we do know in this game that anything can happen.”

Midfielder Jaeger O’Meara is set to return for the Hawks’ trip south to take on the winless Kangaroos on Saturday.

O’Meara has missed the past two games with a hip concern.

And providing he gets through training he will return to the Hawks’ line-up.

“We are hoping so,” Clarkson said.

“He’s been really close the last couple of weeks.

“He’s just had some groin and hip discomfort coming out of the game two weeks ago against Adelaide and we thought it was going to settle really quickly,

“He was chomping at the bit to play last week and it’s so tempting to want to play him.”

Clarkson also confirmed that the Hawks will be without Jack Gunston who is set to miss a couple weeks due to the back spasms he sustained in the warm up last week. “He has come back from that back surgery and he played the one game and got through the game OK but then in the warm-up before last week’s game he had a back spasm,” Clarkson said.

“That has settled down now but now it’s trying to ascertain, given his history, just how we can prevent it from happening again. It just happens at an innocuous time. He won’t play this week.”