Hawthorn “don’t deserve” to play finals in 2020 on current form, according to Luke Hodge.
The Hawks were restricted to just four goals in another dour performance during Monday night’s 16-point loss to Fremantle at Optus Stadium.
Speaking on SEN’s Whateley, Hodge says his former club has a “big decision” to make regarding whether they will undergo a full rebuild going forward.
“The way they’re playing, they don’t deserve to (play finals),” the four-time premiership Hawk said.
“It’s not a pretty game style and you don’t have to play pretty to win games of football but it’s not attractive - they’re not scoring, teams are finding it easy to get the ball off them and score the other way.
“There is a big decision that needs to be made. You look at what North (Melbourne) are doing and after they committed last year to not rebuilding, they are making the call the other way now.
“I’d say for everyone at Hawthorn it’s disappointing. I’d say for a lot of other supporters they’d be enjoying it.”
The emergence of Will Day has been a bright spark in an ageing Hawks side but a lack of top-end young talent could see them look to rejuvenate their list via this year's draft.
“I did say last week that Clarko (Alastair Clarkson) loves to be a man of his word and he’s brought so many blokes into that football club that he’s saying we’re not rebuilding … that might have to be rethought by the end of the year if they’re not going to start bringing younger blokes in now,” Hodge said.
“I do agree with what he did say that you can’t play too many young guys at once because you need the older guys around them to teach them, and that has been his theory and I think it’s proven over a number of years with a lot of clubs.
“If you can drip feed in younger blokes to have less responsibility then they’re going to learn off the older blokes and they’re going to fit into the team.
“If you put in 5-10 younger blokes straight up they don’t know what their role is, they’re all trying to find the ball themselves rather than just coming in and playing a simple role with some senior guys.”
Sitting at 4-6 with a percentage of 85.2, Hawthorn simply must beat West Coast at Optus Stadium on Sunday night to keep their fading finals hopes alive.