East Wagga-Kooringal without Trent Garner and Tim Smith for round one clash with The Rock-Yerong Creek

Key defenders Trent Garner (knee) and Tim Smith (unavailable) will both miss Saturday's season opener against The Rock-Yerong Creek at Gumly Oval.

New Hawks recruit Dan McCarthy will also miss the start of the year as he strives toward a mid-season return from a knee reconstruction.

Coming in off a year off, EWK coach Matt Hard said it has been a hard to get a gauge on the Hawks preparation but is happy the season proper has arrived.

"It's a tough one. You ask yourself have we gone in with enough practice matches, are we fit enough, these sort of things but at the end of the day it is what it is, it's round one and we're happy to be playing for points again," Hard said.

"We'll take a while to gel. We've got a lot of new faces and it's going to take time but a lot of planning goes in and now we get to start the process, which is what I'm most looking forward to."

The Hawks, grand finalists in 2019, are again expected to be one of the competition front-runners on the back of a strong recruitment drive.

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They experienced big losses in both trial games against Riverina League heavyweights Wagga Tigers and Coolamon but had a large number of unavailable players in both hit-outs.

It will be a new-look Hawks outfit that runs out on Saturday. Former Hawthorn footballer Jarrad Boumann will make his debut for EWK, as will Alex Rogers, Ben Cadzow and Kieran McCarthy.

Hard is happy enough with how the Hawks are coming together.

"It's been an indifferent pre-season. We're trying to pick up where we left off, having had three pre-seasons and only having played two games of footy," he said.

"It's hard to get a gauge on things when you haven't seen if they are going to work or don't work in games. But we've put things in place and working on a style of footy at training, that's been our biggest focus, and now we'll get to put it to the test this weekend against The Rock."

EWK will be light on in defence with Garner still recovering from minor knee surgery, and Smith unavailable this weekend.

That may present an opportunity for TRYC, and their two new key forwards, Dean Biermann and Joey Kerin.

Hard does not quite know what to expect from the Magpies.

"They've got some big Canberra recruits, that we're going to have to be careful of," he said.

"They're going to be enthusiastic, they're going to be fit and Brad (Aiken) is a good coach and he knows what to expect from guys so I expect they'll be tough opposition first up."

Hard is yet to decide where Boumann will play on Saturday, but he played forward in their most recent trial.

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