Alastair Clarkson Responds To Mark Williams’ Calls For Him To Move On

Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson has responded to the article former Port Adelaide coach Mark Williams wrote during the week suggesting it was time for him to finish his time at the Hawks.

Clarko has endured a tough start to the 2017 season, with the Hawks sitting bottom of the leader with an 0-3 record and without club legends Jordan Lewis and Sam Mitchell.

Williams penned an article during the week suggesting Clarkson should leave Hawthorn before he overstayed his welcome, relating his experience at Port Adelaide where he felt he stayed on too long.

But the quadruple-premiership coach dismissed Williams' advice.

"I haven't read the article, but a friend of mine relayed the content of it,” Clarkson said.

“Whenever your side is going through a tough patch, there's going to be external noise and opinion. That's the game that we're in.

"All we need to do is bunker down with a collective effort at our footy club… We've worked our way through tough positions before.”

Clarko drew some inspiration from a famous American rocker in his musings.

"Bruce Springsteen's got a great song — 'hard times come, hard times go’,” he said.

“We're going through a hard time at the minute, but we're really, really strong in our resolve to pull ourselves out of this pickle that we're in and get ourselves back on the winning list."

The Hawks were put to the sword to the tune of 86 points by Gold Coast last week, and Clarkson pointed at the Suns themselves as an example of a club bouncing back from the precipice.

Gold Coast were spanked by 102 points by GWS the week before they smashed Hawthorn.

"As we've seen, it's clearly been demonstrated by a couple of sides in the last couple of weeks in Gold Coast and Fremantle, who have turned their seasons around very, very quickly," Clarkson said.

"It can happen, as long as we continue to have faith in the processes we've got in place here and the people that we've got in place here.

"That has been the case for a long period of time and I don't expect anything to be any different in our approach over the next few weeks."

The Hawks take on the 3-0 Cats at the MCG tomorrow in their traditional Easter Monday fixture.