Jack Ginnivan has lapped up a drought-breaking win for the ‘Hollywood Hawks’ to return to the top eight at the expense of the below-par Bulldogs.

The 22-year-old kicked two goals and laid on another while Mabior Chol starred with four of his own and two goal assists in a 12.9 (81) to 8.11 (59) win at Marvel Stadium.

After three straight losses Hawks coach Sam Mitchell and his stat-padding players sought a circuit-breaker and found it from the opening bounce, racing out to a four-goal lead at quarter-time.

The Dogs kept up the pressure but Hawthorn kept responding, confident enough in themselves to bring some personality back into their games.

Ginnivan showed the ball before blasting his second goal into the stands late in the game.

“Jeez, that’s the fastest I’ve ever run — I’m pretty slow,” he laughed in his post-match interview on Channel 7.

“I never really get to bounce the ball much. But no it was good.

“I was kicking pretty bad tonight and that only just snuck in, it would’ve been pretty embarrassing if I missed that.”

Chol joked he “wasn’t too sure about” the showboating and said, with a smile, that teammates were already questioning “what was Ginnivan thinking there” after the game.

Ginnivan said the “panic” during Hawthorn’s losing streak was only external and praised Mitchell for his balance between “rage and joy” in recent weeks.

But stand-in captain Dylan Moore described the win as their “most important” of the last two years after being challenged by all and sundry.

“That was a great effort. Doggies are a really good side and to put four quarters together was massive,” he said.

“We needed to come together and just talk, I think we’ve been building a lot of frustration the last few weeks where we weren’t playing our best football.

“We’ve probably been saying we’ll be right, it’ll click, but it was great that we had a good meeting and we just got everything out.

“That was huge to get everything off our chest and vent a little bit and now we’ve played some good footy tonight.”

After only registering a combined 74 tackles in their previous two games, the Hawks racked up 82 to 73 against the Bulldogs.

Turnovers proved costly for the Dogs as they tried to fight back — a poor kick from Lachlan McNeil gifted Chol his third goal in the third quarter.

Then Chol was given a mark he really didn’t control and he kicked his fourth, giving the Hawks a game-high lead of 28 points.

But the last two goals of the term meant the Bulldogs were only 16 points behind and still well in the contest.

Jarman Impey kicked his first goal of the season, celebrating by cradling his arms to honour newborn son Zion, and then Ginnivan iced the contest.

Dogs captain Marcus Bontempelli had a team-high nine clearances, while fellow onballer Ed Richards continued his strong form this season.

“First thoughts (in the team meeting) were we weren’t hard enough tonight,” Richards told Channel 7.

“They were obviously better in the contest, they got a rev-up during the week so we knew going in that would be the challenge for us and we obviously didn’t step up to the challenge well enough.

“It’s obviously massively disappointing. That was the main focus, really, and not enough of us were up to the task on that.

“They were able to fight through tackles and we butchered the ball, to be honest, so that fed into their game.”

The Hawks improved to an 8-5 record, while the Bulldogs are 6-6 and have only won one out of seven this season against top-eight teams.

- with AAP