Hawthorn's list strategy is again in the spotlight after a shocking start to the 2023 season.

Sam Mitchell's young squad, by some margin the least experienced in the competition, has been taken apart, first by 59 points against arch-rival Essendon, then last Sunday by 81 points against Sydney.

What had a couple of weeks ago looked an eminently winnable contest against another wooden spoon fancy in North Melbourne this week is instead now against an unbeaten side high on confidence and led by the Hawks' former mentor in Alastair Clarkson, who won't be short on personal motivation.

Just where and when is any sort of win going to come from this season for Hawthorn?

It's a predicament which again has critics questioning the extent to which the Hawks cleared the decks at the end of 2022, such names as Tom Mitchell, Jack Gunston, Jaeger O'Meara and Liam Shiels leaving, skipper Ben McEvoy retiring, a host of others delisted.

Against the Bombers and Swans, Hawthorn has patently lacked on-field direction, unable to stem the bleeding, nine unanswered goals conceded against Essendon, no less than 13 in a row against Sydney.

Last year, the Hawks averaged 61.3 games per player, about mid-table in terms of experience. This season,z that figure is down to just 42.8, not only the youngest and rawest playing group in the AFL, but by a long way, the next least-experienced club Adelaide with 51.7 games per player.

Nearly 20 fewer games each than the Hawks boasted last year across a 43-strong playing list is a massive amount. There's 26 Hawthorn players who have just 20-odd games or less under their belts. To give it more context, when the Hawks take on Geelong on Easter Monday, it will be a list averaging 42.8 games up against one whose average is 92.4, more than double.

Hawthorn's critics fear that Mitchell and co. have cut too deeply, too quick. That going into battle with a playing group this young and unseasoned is a recipe to leave the kids permanently scarred as they cop belting after belting.

Those with an eye to history might cite the example of Melbourne circa 2012-13, when the Demons similarly jettisoned much of their experience, winning just six games in two years, and suffering seven defeats by 90 points or more as the likes of Jack Grimes and Jack Trengove were in a leadership sense thrown to the wolves.

You'd hate to see young Hawthorn stars already carrying more than their share of responsibility like Jai Newcombe, Will Day and Finn Maginness struggle under the same sort of burden.

But an article I came across last week made me wonder whether I'd inadvertently stumbled upon a partial explanation at least as to why the Hawks felt compelled to expedite the process of regeneration.

In The Age, Patrick O'Neil lamented how his eight-year-old son, a Hawthorn fan, was still yet to see his team win. Could his loyalties withstand a few more years ahead of hard times for the Hawks?

I'm sure I'm far from the only person who read it and immediately responded with an eye roll and derisive snort. Hawthorn? Hard times? Are you serious?

This is a club which has won 12 of its 13 premierships in a glorious 50-odd-year span from 1971, an average of about one flag every four years. Hawthorn won a flag hat-trick not even a decade ago.

Try selling this sob story to fans of St Kilda, still with just one premiership to its name won 57 years ago. Or the Western Bulldogs fans who had to wait 62 years between their two sips at the premiership cup.

And yet I also get (for us oldies) what seems the relative impatience. Patrick's son is perhaps representative of the new norm. Generations which have far more entertainment options, more choices about where to invest their time, energy and passions.

It's 27 years now since Hawthorn in 1996, despite all its modern day success, came within a whisker of merging with Melbourne and ceasing to exist in its own right.

It took the club's near extinction for an apathetic, small support base to be sufficiently moved to become an active, engaged and much larger membership base, which then had to wait another decade or so before Hawthorn again became a consistently successful club.

Much, though, has changed, even since then. Could that same rallying around a club in distress and patience for on-field success happen now?

I have my doubts.

When Paul Roos coached Sydney, he often spoke about the club from a non-traditional football environment not being able to rebuild for fear of losing an entire support base. But these days, I'm not sure even heritage Victorian clubs have that sort of largesse.

The better news for Sam Mitchell, not to mention anxious Hawthorn supporters, is that the delicate balance of AFL power suggests, and recent ladders confirm, that it is possible for a club to turn around a seemingly dire situation relatively quickly.

And the Hawks might need to. While they might risk a generation of youngsters with fragile self-esteem on the field, the risk of having no youngsters at all sitting in the grandstands looking on is even greater.