As part of the alignment partnership, Box Hill dropped its "Mustangs" nickname in favour of the "Hawks" nickname of Hawthorn but its brown and gold playing uniform with the large white horse emblem remained unchanged. The early years of the restructured VFL competition handed a considerable advantage to clubs which had entered into "alignment" partnerships; the blend of full-time, professional AFL listed players with a smaller number of VFL players on most occasions proved to be too strong for "stand alone" VFL clubs composed entirely of part-time, semi-professional footballers. Such was the case for the Box Hill Hawks, which between 2000 and 2005 completed the most successful period of its long history, with 6 consecutive finals appearances. The Box Hill Hawks claimed its first major division VFL premiership in 2001 under the coaching of former North Melbourne player and Werribee coach Donald McDonald. After finishing the home-and-away season in 2nd place with 15 wins and 5 losses, it defeated Springvale and the Murray Kangaroos to claim a grand final berth against Werribee. Werribee had only lost two games for the season and had twice comfortably defeated the Box Hill Hawks during the home-and-away round, but Box Hill jumped Werribee early and by halfway through the 2nd quarter had established a lead of more than six goals which Werribee was unable to threaten. In the end the Box Hill won comfortably by 37 points, 13.13(91) to Werribee 7.12(54). The Box Hill Hawks again played in the grand final in 2003 under the coaching of former Western Bulldogs champion and 1990 Brownlow Medallist Tony Liberatore. During the course of the season, the Box Hill Hawks established a club record of 13 consecutive wins, but after losing the qualifying final to Wiliamstown (Box Hill's 1,000th match in VFA/VFL competition), it defeated Werribee and Sandringham in knock-out finals to qualify for a grand final rematch against Wiliamstown. Wiliamstown, at that time aligned to Collingwood, fielded an unprecedented 16 AFL listed players in its grand final team and proved too strong for the Box Hill Hawks, which fought hard after it trailed by more than seven goals at half-time; Wiliamstown eventually prevailed by 29 points 13.14(92) to the Box Hill Hawks 9.9(63). The 2004 season saw the Box Hill Hawks stage a dramatic mid-season turn around in its fortunes.