What went wrong?
We certainly come with an expectation to do better than we did then, today. Credit to the Bulldogs, formidable opponent. I thought they delivered, they were up for a street fight and we were out for a nice Sunday stroll and we got what we deserved. We always win or lose, so I take responsibility, it must have been something in the preparation that allowed our players to present with a mindset and inability to work.

It started out of the middle, I thought they were dominant out of the middle, first two clearances, two scores. They had some fierce pressure, I thought we tried to play perfect football. When we should have been taking some ground and gathering ourselves, it just fed off itself and they had a lot of repeat entries and a lot of scores. That was disappointing, I thought we turned it around a little. We had a little bit more of a go I reckon, but they scored easily and we got caught out of position.

Match report: Dogs dazzle Freo

There are some mechanics about that but quite simply I thought their midfield out-tackled and out-worked ours and any ball we did get was dirty ball so therefore their running backs were able to bounce out on us and they had good days. They had clean ball going in and to be frank at times I thought our defence sort of stood up as strange as that sounds. In all fairness if their accuracy had been better it would have been more convincing. At half time we gathered ourselves and fought on until probably the last ten minutes where it fell away again. We have some concerns coming out of it, you look around, you would rather be a North Melbourne and Adelaide game, and you would rather be a Sydney or Bulldogs as opposed to a Collingwood or a Fremantle today. So we are disappointed and today counts. We won’t say it doesn’t count, it counts but fortunately we get an opportunity to gather ourselves and fortunately it’s a short break and we get to have a go next week.

How much was Michael Johnson missed today?
David Dench couldn’t have stopped them today, or Geoff Southby, or Stephen Silvagni. I wouldn’t have thought we missed him too much.

Was the contested ball count the most worrying thing?
-43 is embarrassing.

Was Fyfe struggling with something today?
Nat was 100% fit going into the game today. All our players were.

Vote for the Freo Fans' MVP, thanks to Maccas

Was Silvagni out the right call?
We new they wanted to go small and mobile, we wanted the run and bounce. That’s the way defences are going. It was tough on him but it was the right call.

You mentioned the backs stood up a bit, do you think Zac Dawson was influential today?
I thought Zac had a real go, I thought he had some moments that weren’t perfect for him but I think he played with intensity under all sorts of adversity. I think if you talk on the effort front, Zac was pretty solid. It’s interesting, visually you can see different players intensity levels. I think everyone goes out to play but it’s a tough caper and you need to be prepared for a street fight. I’m in it with our players. Our round one record is strong, you talk about the past counts for nothing but we’ve been able to get teams to the line. We weren’t able to do that today but we played a very good opponent.

Do you take something out of the Bulldogs’ running style from the back?
To be honest with you, if we want to get into mechanics, all their entries and scores came from centre forward. We actually scored equally from centre back and had the same amount of entries. It was all about repeat entries and attacking mid possession gains so their ability to get it in from centre bounces and lock it in has been their feature and is their feature.

Was Pavlich’s report any concern?
You’re always concerned if someone gets reported. I saw it, but I’m not in the position to comment and I’m sure it will run its course.

Pav on report

Where do you turn it around, what’s your focus this week?
The aim is to turn it around. We need to get into action and identify what we need to improve, which is lots. We’d like to think we’ve got some fundamentals, which are bit better than that. We’ll identify them and work on the track even though we really only have one session to do that. It’s a mental game, we’ve got to make sure we are right above the shoulders. We play Gold Coast beaming with confidence, flying over. Clearly confidence comes from action so there will be some slight seeds of doubt in players. We’ve been able to be competitive for a long period of time so that’s what we aim to do again.

Do you think you’ll make many changes this week?
I think Sandilands is an obvious one. Zac Clarke banged his knee up a bit in the first centre bounce. Aaron is the obvious one, Johnson will be available and our guys at Peel had a pretty good win.  So it certainly can’t stay the same coming out of this but sometimes you just roll out the same 22. I think a change will be likely.