Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson insists his players can bounce back from the worst defeat of their AFL season, but it won't be through flicking the magic switch.

The Hawks' embarrassing 88-point defeat to the Western Bulldogs on Saturday night - when the reigning premier went goalless in the first half - has them a game outside the eight and in danger of missing the finals.

Clarkson conceded after the 19.19 (133) to 6.9 (45) thrashing the Hawks would struggle to reach the finals on their current form, which now stands at three successive defeats.

After next Sunday's game against North Melbourne in Launceston, the Hawks must play six sides currently inside the eight in the run-home, and they still have several players sidelined through injury.

But Clarkson is more focused on his group regaining its confidence, and said that would only come through hard work at training.

"There's no easy solution. We all like to think we can just press the button and things will turn around, but it's not always that easy," he said.

"The only formula that I know and our other coaches know and certainly most of our players is that it's a tough brutal game and at different stages you have great runs of form and different stages you have tough patches.

"We are in one of those right now and have been for a fair bit of this season and we will work our way through it.

"That's going to be frustrating for our players, frustrating for our coaches and certainly frustrating for our supporters.

"But we can't always have the cream on top. We delivered some tremendous performances last year and saluted (a premiership flag) at the end of last year on the back of those performances, and we've been unable to consistently put those performances on the park this season.

"But we know from our form last year that we've got it within this group, so we just need to find out how we can best get it out of them at the current time.

"This group will bounce back, I am sure, we just need to keep working hard and things will come our way."

Clarkson said the Bulldogs were so good they made Hawthorn look "third- and fourth-rate".

He was prepared to take out the fact the Hawks fought back in the third quarter as one of few positives to come out of the game, although he conceded the Bulldogs had eased off given they led by 84 points at half-time.

Typifying Hawthorn's performance, star forward Lance Franklin was kept goalless - by Bulldog Brian Lake - and Clarkson said the reigning Coleman medallist had to lift.

"He's played poorly two or three weeks in a row and he's one of the guys who we look to be an important player for our side and he hasn't played well," he said.

"He needs to work hard on the training track - that's the only solution to it all.

"Magic potions, they're just not there in footy."

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