HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has hailed a strong team performance in the wake of his side’s 47-point win over the Adelaide Crows at Aurora Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

As thrilled as he was with the club’s fifth consecutive victory after a poor start to the season, Clarkson said he was delighted to reward the loyal Tasmanian fans who had stuck with the Hawks through some poor recent performances in Launceston.

“We hadn’t played particularly well here in the last 12 months and we were really keen to reward our supporters in a sense,” he said.

“They’ve made a big commitment to our footy club, and we want to perform well down here and we hadn’t been - so we were really pleased that we were able to finish off the game well today.”

Clarkson chose not to single out individuals, despite outstanding performances from superstars such as Luke Hodge, Cyril Rioli and Lance Franklin.

“Right across the board you need players playing good consistent footy and we were pleased with that - more pleased with the spread of players that did make a solid contribution. You’ll win more games of footy when you’ve got that even spread.”

As well as praising tall forwards Franklin and Jarryd Roughead for presenting all day, Clarkson’s delight at the return to form of Rioli during the past few weeks was obvious.

“We were really pleased with our forward structure all day. Roughy and Buddy both provided really good targets and Wayde Skipper when he was down there as well.

“He’s (Rioli) been okay for us in terms of his body since round one; I think he’s played every game in that time.

“We’re really pleased he kicked three goals and got a lot of touches and still laid nine or 10 tackles today - it was a really solid game.”

Now sitting in the top eight on the back of their fifth consecutive win, the Hawks have a blockbuster against old rivals Essendon to look forward to next week before a week off thanks to the split round.

“It’s going to be an intriguing game of footy, but the whole round should be intriguing,” he said. “It’s a split round and it’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out. We’ve just got to keep on winning.

“The last time we played Essendon we were terrible - and we’ve been a lot better since then I might add - but we need to be if we’re going to knock off the Bombers next week.”