Alistair Clarkson fights off Brendon Bolton challenge

After a dominant first half display from the Blues had Bolton's men leading by 31 points at the main break, Clarkson managed to rally his brown and gold troops to storm home and win 13.15 (93) to 13.10 (88) at UTAS Stadium.

"A lot of our senior players had significant second halves that allowed us to get back into the contest and in a game like that where you're giving up a five-goal lead at half-time, the game is always going to go down to the wire," Clarkson said.

Led by the ever-improving Jaeger O'Meara with a career-high 42 possessions, James Sicily, Liam Shiels, Tom Scully and James Worpel all had more than 20 disposals and a direct influence on Hawthorn's rapid comeback in the third quarter.

"Jaeger was pretty important for us in a midfield that was getting beaten pretty soundly; he was able to at least give us hands on the footy on a pretty regular basis," he said.

The crowd of 15,888 featured many die-hard Carlton supporters who rode all the ups and downs of the roller-coaster encounter with the Blues, sometimes providing a louder reaction than the Hawthorn faithful.

After spending five years as assistant coach to Clarkson at the Hawks, Bolton took both positives and negatives out of the loss.

"It's a game of inches, it's a game of quarters, it's a game of seconds, it's a game of contests and we didn't nail those at critical times particularly in the second half," Bolton said.

"You've got to be able to adjust and I didn't think we adjusted well enough in the third quarter after a really good first half.

"In the last five, six, seven minutes, we came home really strong and it showed it's a game of seconds. If there was a few more seconds, you never know what might have happened."