Hawthorn has retained its imposing Aurora Stadium streak intact, grinding the record out to 18 consecutive wins on Sunday.
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But not before Gold Coast gave the Hawks an early shock, dashing out to a 21-point lead moments into the second term.
The Hawks pulled the margin back to one point at the long break before outscoring the Suns in a sluggish six goal-to-two second half for a 12.14 (86) to 8.12 (60) win.
Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson was pragmatic over his side’s inability to cast off the 16th-placed Suns under the conditions.
“That’s what happens in games of footy - it’s like a game of chess in a sense. You’ve got to feel your way a bit,” Clarkson said.
“Difficult conditions, especially as the game unfolded, but early on despite the fact that the ball seemed to be okay to grab, the ground was quite spongy and slippery.
“As we saw, it only took a little bit of a shower for that to become a quite slippery game of footy where possession was at a premium.
“It makes it tough but Gold Coast have got some good players and they started the game well.
“We were just a little bit off with some of our skills, but pretty pleased that we got the result that we did.”
Under Clarkson during the 2008 AFL premiership, the Hawks were known for their unsociable football.
But the fight for contested possessions has been thrown out for dominating the uncontested ball.
The Suns won the contest 136-120, but Hawks ran with freedom 281 touches to 191.
“We’ve been not so spectacular at contested footy for a long period of time and we’ve won silverware playing that brand of footy,” he said.
“I can’t measure why we are low in that manner, but if we are low in one thing, I can tell you that we must be good at something else.
“Once again it’s swings and roundabouts; we don't worry too much about it.
“We don’t like the fact that we happened to be low in contested ball, but we don’t look at that as the most important statistic that measures whether we win games.”