Hawthorn suffered a double blow on Saturday night, losing Jarryd Roughead to a season-ending Achilles injury in their five-point defeat against Geelong.

The unbeaten Cats held third-placed Hawthorn scoreless in a gripping final quarter to win the AFL clash 13.10 (88) to 13.5 (83) in front of 63,476 fans at the MCG.

Coach Chris Scott's Cats improved their record to 11-0 on top of the AFL ladder. It was Geelong's sixth consecutive victory over the Hawks since Hawthorn won the 2008 grand final.

Key forward James Podsiadly kicked a career-best six goals for the Cats, all in the first half.

Lance Franklin led Hawthorn's scorers with four majors while rover Sam Mitchell had a game-high 38 possessions was instrumental in the Hawks surging to a 17-point advantage at three-quarter time.

But the Cats recovered with three unanswered goals in the final term.

Hawthorn spent most of the last quarter in defence but a late attacking raid almost produced a win, with Franklin going down in a marking contest and Hawks fans outraged he didn't receive a free kick in the last minute.

Clarkson said the Hawks could only blame themselves after taking the wrong option several times going into attack in the final term.

He said the Hawks could still be a force in the finals series without Roughead, who was carried off in the last quarter.

"It's a disappointing injury for us because he has just been in such good form," Clarkson said of Roughead.

"He has hurt his Achilles pretty bad so we'll get that looked at throughout the course of the week but I think he's going to spend a fair amount of time on the sidelines.

"If it is ruptured which they suspect it is then he'll miss the rest of the season.

"We've got to move on pretty quickly and just keep going. We've got three guys now, Stephen Gilham, (Ben) Stratton and Roughy, they're all very important players to us, they've all gone down with season-ending injuries.

"Teams have won flags like that before. I can remember being at Port Adelaide (as an assistant coach) at the start of 2004.

"The captain Matthew Primus and Josh Francou both hurt knees early in the season. Everyone could have quite easily said you can't win a flag without Primus and Francou.

"Two guys stepped into their roles and they won the flag in 2004. So it can be done.

"It's going to test us but we're certainly not going to give up."

The Cats dominated the opening term, kicking 5.2 (32) to Hawthorn's 2.1 (13).

Hawthorn fought back in the second term with seven goals to Geelong's five, and by halftime the Cats were six points ahead.

Hawthorn used substitute Luke Breust in the second quarter as Clinton Young limped off with a hamstring injury.

The Hawks added 4.3 to Geelong's 0.4 in the third quarter.

Unable to score a goal in the third term, Geelong kicked three in the first 10 minutes of the last quarter including two to Steve Johnson to grab a one-point lead.

With midfielder James Kelly leading the way, the competition leaders did most of the attacking but couldn't seal the result with a fourth goal for the final term.

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