A surging Hawthorn, powered by spearhead Lance Franklin, underlined their AFL premiership credentials with a drought-breaking 46-point swamping of Sydney at the SCG on Sunday.

After a lacklustre first half, Franklin and the Hawks dominated the Swans to win 15.16 (106) to 8.12 (60).

Franklin kicked 1.4 in the first half, but finished with 6.6, as the Hawks piled on seven-goals-to-two in a decisive third-quarter surge.

It was a welcome change of fortune for the Hawks at the SCG, where they hadn't won since 2003 and had won just one of the their past 11 fixtures at the famous venue.

"It probably came down to work rate, we wanted to work harder," Franklin told reporters.

"It's always good to win interstate, over the last couple of years, we've been down in that area, so it was a really good win."

Franklin enhanced his value to the Hawks by notching up 28 touches, second only for the visitors to the 30 tallied by Grant Birchall.

"He's had 12 shots on goal and 28 possessions, he was very very important to us today and we're obviously pretty mindful of how dominant he can be in games and that we direct too much footy to him at times," Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson said.

"That's compounded a little bit maybe by Jarred Roughead playing more in the ruck and he's not down there as a second tall to draw the ball as much, but we'll just work that out as the season progresses."

Ruckman Max Bailey, who was playing just his seventh senior game in six and a half seasons following three knee reconstructions competed well against Sydney's Shane Mumford, before suffering a head knock in the third quarter.

The victory lifted Hawthorn to third, while Sydney slumped to eighth.

The Swans led by five points at the first break, but were held goalless in a low scoring second term and kicked just four majors in the second half.

"The inside 50 count, there was only two difference in the end, but they were able to get some quality clean ball and when a player like Buddy Franklin get's quality clean balls, they are pretty hard to stop," Sydney coach John Longmire said.

Longmire lamented his team's inability to sustain maximum effort for the entire game and said the performance demonstrated the distance between Sydney and the top teams.

"If we don't give maximum effort for four quarters, we fall back in the pack," Longmire said.

"We've had a couple of good wins the last two weeks and we've had some players play some really good footy over that period, but we know we are still a little bit off and we need to improve to beat some of those (top level) teams."

Clarkson was rapt to end his team's bad run in Sydney, but denied the confiscation of his players' mobile phones in the lead-up to the game had played a significant part in focusing their minds on the task.

"We needed to change our mindset coming to Sydney, great Motel, beautiful harbour, just everything in our time here has been too comfortable," Clarkson said.

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