HAWTHORN coach Alastair Clarkson has thrown his support behind misfiring forward Lance Franklin, saying he expects Buddy to "tear a game apart" soon.

Franklin's woes in front of goal continued in last week's loss to Richmond -  a game Clarkson described as "a horror day where nothing seemed to go right" that "came out of left field for our footy club and … probably the footy community".

Franklin kicked 1.3 to take his season tally to a wasteful 21.36, but Clarkson said the errant forward was still "helping us enormously".

"He's going through a stretch at the moment that's a little bit rough for him in terms of his goal kicking conversion, but if you look a little bit deeper into the stats you'll see that he's the No.1 scoring assist player in the competition," Clarkson said from Melbourne airport on Friday.

"He's still actually playing some pretty good footy. If he'd converted some of those chances a little bit better then you'd be arguing that he's having perhaps his best season of AFL footy.

"He's not at the moment, but I still feel like it's only a quarter or a game away from him tearing a game apart."

Clarkson agreed the Hawks do not deserve to be premiership favourites after last week's thumping by Richmond, but says meeting the team's own expectations is much more important than those of bookmakers.

His players fell well short of their own internal benchmarks in the 62-point loss at the MCG, but Clarkson backed the Hawks to hit back against North Melbourne in Launceston on Saturday.

"Every week there's a different premiership favourite isn't there?" he said.

"We've been it several times this year already and we haven't been able to live up to that billing and nor do we deserve to.

"Carlton had their turn when they were it, it just rolls from one side to another, what we need to do is just put together some consistent performances again.

"All we'll look at is the Kangaroos game this week. We've got the players that we've got and we back them in and on the bulk of occasions they do a pretty good job for us.

"We think if our method, structure and attitude is right for the game then we're in every contest no matter who the opposition is."

True to his word, Clarkson made just one to change to the team this week with tall defender Stephen Gilham making way for speedster Bradley Hill.

However, he added Gilham's omission wasn't a statement about the full-back's form three games back from a knee reconstruction.

"It's just horses for courses a little but in terms of the balance of our side and what's best," he said.

"Gilly's played three games back and he certainly wasn't our worst player last week, but it was just really about the balance of the back end and how we structure up best against the Kangaroos."

Gilham was named as an emergency and travelled to Tasmania with the team. 

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs