The Hawks’ hopes of a top-two finish slipped almost out of their grasp after a 22-point loss to Port Adelaide last weekend.
The Lions, however, are coming off an 87-point defeat at the hands of Adelaide and will be hoping for a more consistent performance, despite facing the reigning premiers.
“It’s a nothing to lose mentality and we’ll go down there and see how well we can go against a quality outfit,” midfield coach Simon Black said in this week’s Vero Coaches Preview.
“We’ll need to back ourselves and see where we can go with our contested ball.
“They’re a great side in that part of the game and hopefully we get the ball going in our forward 50 a fair share of the time.”
The Lions have lost 12 of their past 13 matches and will face a monumental task against the back-to-back premiers.
Hawthorn has dominated the meetings between the two sides since 2007, winning eight of the last nine – including four games by more than 50 points.
“The good sides, they can score very, very quickly and like last week we got scored against very quickly.
“We’ve got to make sure we don’t allow that momentum to get away from us when the opposition have it.
“Being able to restrict their number of goals, back to back, is a big part of being competitive in a game”, Black said.
“We’ve got to make sure we fight it out and try to swing the momentum our way pretty early on.”
The Hawks will be without captain Luke Hodge through suspension but Black said with talent across all areas the Lions can’t afford to focus on individual players.
“You can go through each line – forward, mid and back.
“That’s why they are back to back premiers and are still such a wonderful team.
“Every player in our team who has a direct opponent will have to make it a one on one battle and try to win that individual battle”, Black said.
“(If you were to look at) our talent versus their talent at the moment, we’d probably get blown off the park, so it’s got to be a pretty dour performance from our guys."
