After staging its most comprehensive win in a season now filled to the brim with highlights — and with fellow finals hopefuls falling down all around — Hawthorn is shaping as one of September’s most daunting propositions.

Following their mauling of undermanned Carlton on Sunday, it seems a near certainty that Sam Mitchell’s Hawks will qualify for this year’s finals, as favourable matchups against Richmond and North Melbourne await in the home-and-away season’s final fortnight.

Hawthorn is clearly the form side of the competition, and while its winning run was stemmed by GWS in Round 21, it took a club-best final-quarter comeback to down the humming Hawks.

Collingwood surrendered its commanding lead to Sydney on Friday, Essendon inexplicably lost to Gold Coast on Saturday night, the Blues copped a body blow on Sunday afternoon, and then the Western Bulldogs squandered a golden opportunity later in the day — bumping the Hawks into the top eight for the first time this season.

“We went in thinking it was an elimination final … We came to play, and we got the result we wanted,” Weddle told Triple M post-game on Sunday.

“Obviously we had a tough loss last week (against GWS) … this week we (said) ‘we’re going to put the foot down’, and we got it done this week, and (we’re) very happy.

“We knew that their work-rate’s not the strongest in the fourth quarter, so we were like ‘may as well start it from the start, get them tired early’. And when we heard that they were getting numbers down, we were like ‘let’s just keep going’, and (we) really tired them out.

“We love our attacking (style) of football, and we’re a young group, so we’re just going to run all day and try and put teams to the sword — we did that today, and hopefully we can for the remainder of the year as well.”

First-year Hawthorn rebounder Massimo D’Ambrosio was on the same wavelength as his speedy compatriot.

“We studied them really hard and knew what they were going to bring,” D’Ambrosio told foxfooty.com.au post-match on Sunday.

“I thought we executed the plan really well; we were unbelievable all day and it was a four-quarter effort — we knew it was going to take that.”