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Finish line approaches:Alastair Clarkson and Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett.Credit:

The Hawks have a 3-4 record with a percentage of just 78.6 and face fellow strugglers Sydney at the SCG next Saturday. Hawthorn’s pain was exacerbated by an ankle injury to versatile tall Tim O’Brien.

Clarkson’s future at the Hawks has come under scrutiny in the past week,with premiership Hawk Jordan Lewis telling SEN he questioned whether Clarkson was the man to take Hawthorn forward.

Clarkson is contracted for another two seasons,and Kennett said on Saturday that the Hawks weren’t planning on sacking the coaching great. But the president flagged a used-by date for the coach during his radio interview on 3AW.

“We won’t be sacking Clarko,Clarko won’t be sacking us,when the times comes he and we will come to an agreed position and I suspect it will be at the end of this contract,” Kennett said.

Clarkson responded diplomatically after the loss.

"I didn’t even know he said anything. We'll work our way through that - hopefully it's a little way off yet,” Clarkson said,while flagging the injection of more youth into the Hawks’ lineup.

“As long as there’s a silver lining and some blue sky for us,we’ll continue to search for it. We know it’s just going to take a roll of the sleeves type of mentality.”

Demons coach Simon Goodwin was upbeat after his side’s second straight win.

“It’s just been a work in progress for a period of time. We’ve probably changed a little bit of our personnel forward of centre. The two talls I thought gave us great aerial[presence] today.[Sam] Weideman and[Luke] Jackson were both really strong in the air and gave us great ground-level support so probably some things we’ve tinkered with a little bit but also the fact we’ve been working pretty hard on that for a fair while now. We’re starting to get a bit of reward which is great for the players and the club,” Goodwin said.

“We’re enjoying being away. We’ve embraced the hub lifestyle,it’s given a great chance for our players and coaches to be together more often than we were back in Victoria.

“You can see the way they’re connecting off-field is coming out on-field. This is just the start for us.”

The Dees head to Queensland this week and face Brisbane next Sunday night on the Gold Coast.

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