The Western Bulldogs effectively ended Hawthorn's AFL title defence after keeping the reigning premiers goalless to halftime en route to an 88-point thrashing on Saturday night at Etihad Stadium.

In one of the more remarkable starts to a game of recent times, the Bulldogs led by 84 points at the main break, after the Hawks trudged off the ground to the boos of their own fans with just four behinds on the scoreboard.

The Hawks lifted slightly in the second half, but the 19.19 (133) to 6.9 (45) defeat means they are in serious danger of missing the finals, and there is no chance of reaching the top four.

Given the significance of the game, the Hawks were embarrassingly pitiful in the first half as they were brushed off the ball, out-run and woeful in defence, while the Bulldogs piled on 9.6 to quarter-time and had 79 more disposals.

The Bulldogs' win kept them a game clear in third spot and avenged last year's heavy defeat to Hawthorn in the qualifying final.

Shaun Higgins, Brad Johnson and Scott Welsh all kicked three goals, and fullback Brian Lake thrashed Hawk forward Lance Franklin by keeping him goalless for the first time in 62 successive games.

It wasn't until five minutes into the third quarter that Jarryd Roughead booted Hawthorn's first major, to the sounds of Bronx cheers.

Hawks fans also hurled abuse and one mockingly pointed to his heart as the players walked off the ground at halftime.

Hawthorn's scoreline at that point was their equal-lowest to halftime - alongside the 0.4 they managed against Collingwood in 1950 - and the first time the club had been kept goalless in the first half since 1979.

The defeat will leave Hawthorn one game plus percentage outside the eight after round 14, and they must play six sides currently inside the eight in the run home, including unbeaten St Kilda and Geelong.

Although cursed by injury in 2009, the Hawks still had 15 members of last year's premiership side playing against the Bulldogs, and some of them had shockers.

Franklin dropped marks and was constantly under pressure, captain Sam Mitchell was run down from behind and Luke Hodge sent the ball out on the full, to name several glaring errors.

The Bulldogs had good players across the ground and there was a gulf between the sides' tackling and field kicking.

Defenders Jarrod Harbrow and Ryan Hargrave were impressive, Lindsay Gilbee and Matthew Boyd excellent with the ball in their hands and Jason Akermanis set the game alight with 2.3 in the first quarter.

Jordan Lewis was Hawthorn's best player and finished with three goals, while Roughead kicked two.

Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade said the performance in the first half was alongside the best his side had produced.

"It was obviously an extremely good first half of footy," he said.

"This year the (first) half against Sydney was very good, it was 13 goals to two at half-time, so it was very similar to that but probably a little bit better defensively.

"We executed very well.

"It shows you too if you can use the ball well, probably the most important stat is kicking and handball efficiency - if you can use it (well) it beats everything else."

Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson conceded the reigning premiers would struggle to play in the finals on current form.

"It doesn't matter too much what I think if we don't win games of footy," he said.

"If we played like we did tonight we're not going to go anywhere near the finals.

"If we can get some sort of consistent application with our pattern of play we'll challenge.

"We've got the capabilities of the side to play finals footy and we won't give up on that until it's mathematically impossible to get there."

Clarkson said the Bulldogs had made the Hawks look "not just second-rate, but third - and fourth-rate".

"It's a terrible recipe, isn't it, when one team plays at their very best and the other team plays at their very worst," he said.

"As a consequence of that you have a pretty significant margin between the two sides at the end of the game.

"In the first half we played some deplorable footy, even taking into account how clinical the Western Bulldogs were with their ball movement and how slick they were."

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