Their confidence restored, Hawthorn's key defenders are ready for Collingwood's "twin towers" in Friday night's AFL preliminary final.

Josh Gibson was best afield, while Ryan Schoenmakers quelled Swans forward Sam Reid and Ben Stratton successfully returned from injury in the Friday night semi-final win.

Now the Hawks defence, the so-called weak link of their team, must deal with Magpies key forwards Travis Cloke and Chris Dawes.

Tall utility Leigh Brown can also go forward for Collingwood, to great effect.

Gibson heaped praise on Cloke and Dawes, calling them the twin towers, but is looking forward to the duel.

"That will be tough next week, but that's what you look forward to - you want to play on the best and those two are probably the best (key forward) combination going around," Gibson said.

When critics are looking for weaknesses with Hawthorn, they usually start with the defence.

But Gibson noted that Hawthorn's backs this season had the best numbers for stopping opposition forwards marking inside 50m.

"Everyone says we're short, but we must be spoiling a few," he said.

"People can say what they want, we probably are a bit shorter than other teams.

"But the flip side is if we can bring the ball to ground, we have blokes like (Matt) Suckling, (Grant) Birchall and (Brent) Guerra who are surgeons with that left foot.

"We have some weaknesses, we have some strengths."

Gibson and coach Alastair Clarkson praised Schoenmakers, who bounced back from a tough finals initiation a week ago in the loss to Geelong.

The Hawks felt Schoenmakers was unfairly criticised in the media after he struggled against the Cats tall forwards.

"Probably last week we left each other one-on-one a little bit too much, didn't chop out, probably worried about your own back yard," Gibson said.

"Tonight blokes were flying third man up, Stratts (Stratton) was back and I thought Shoey (Schoenmakers) really stood up.

"The young kid, he'd been put under the heat during the week in the media, he came out and he did a good job on Reid.

"It was pleasing for him and it will give him some confidence."

As Schoenmakers bounced back, Gibson continued his stellar season with 21 spoils - understood to be a modern AFL record for one game.

He had to leave the field in the third term after hurting his shoulder and it was probably no coincidence that in his absence, the Swans roared back into the contest.

Gibson, a strong candidate for All-Australian selection on Monday night, said the shoulder injury would not be a problem for next Friday night's clash.

"I will be fine, strap it up and away we go," he said.

"I was off a bit for that third quarter and I could hear the cheers from underneath (the grandstand) - someone told me they weren't Hawthorn supporters.

"I guess we took the foot off the pedal for one quarter and we can't afford to do that, we were hit between the eyes.

"To the boys' credit, they fought back in the fourth quarter and kicked a few goals."

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