The Hawks will travel to Brisbane for their first game of the season against the Bullets on Saturday. They’ll head further north to Cairns seven days later and back up for a second clash with Brisbane 48 hours later.

The tough stretch comes after the Hawks notched impressive road wins over Perth and New Zealand before dropping Monday’s clash against Sydney on their home floor.

The Hawks twice clawed their way back from large deficits to eventually go down by six with coach Rob Beveridge admitting post-match that his side simply ran out gas.

“We were just flat. We didn’t have the zip that we’ve had the last couple of games,” Beveridge said.

“Maybe it was a fatigue thing but we were too passive to conservative and we weren’t proactive enough. 

“The game’s always going to have runs and ups and downs and unfortunately when we had the down times they were pretty bad.

“It’s tough when you play away in Perth and you have a great emotional win and a great emotional win in New Zealand a couple of days later as well. You’ve got all the travel that goes with it.

“We knew [Sydney] were going to play a lot more up tempo and run our legs into the ground and that’s what they did. Every time they got a stop they were just ramming it down our throat and that probably took a toll on us.”

With the Hawks currently sitting third on the ladder, the games against second-placed Brisbane and the fourth-placed Taipans could have a huge bearing on the final make-up of the top four and Beveridge admitted it’s a pivotal month for his side.

“We’ve got a horror stretch this month, we’re pretty much on the road for the whole of December,” Beveridge said.

“If we can maybe split those games, we’ve got seven of our last 10 at home and we can come home with a wet sail.

“We’re not interested in the ladder, it’s the series’ that matter because this competition is so close. It’s going to come down to a whole bunch of teams. We went out to win the [Sydney] game and be 1-2 and give ourselves a chance to win the series but it's not to be.

“We’ve got a series to play against Brisbane now and we’ve got a series against Cairns coming up as well so that’s what we’re looking at.”

Beveridge said it will be a physical and mental battle to get his troops up for the month on the road.

“We’re putting it back on the players to do those one per centers to give ourselves the best possible chance leading into the Brisbane game,” Beveridge said.

“We’ll give them two days off and we’ll obviously analyse the [Sydney] game.

“It’s all about the bodies now, and the minds. We’ll keep positive, we’d won five out of six so now we’re five out of seven. I considered it a new season after our poor start so we’re tracking OK.”