How can you explain today’s win?
Just to the basics, I thought that we tackled and pressured really well. Bulldogs went to a premiership on pressuring and tackling and exploding away. One swallow doesn't make a summer, does it? I thought that there was a bit to like in there. I am not sure that the game changed that dramatically in 12, 13 months... In fact I know it hasn't. It is an opinion business, that’s ok.
Coming to today’s game, did you think a win was possible?
Anything is possible. That is my mantra to the players when I walked in. I didn't walk in inheriting a premiership team or a list. Anything is possible. So what you got to do, you have to be really clear on what you need to do to bring that possibility to life. That is the simple model. What do you want to be? What do you need to do to get what you want? We hadn't been working as hard as we wanted to around the ball and tackling and pressuring. That is a hallmark of all the good teams. That fundamental hasn't changed. Collingwood last night at the SCG. Richmond have been out tackling their opposition. We just kept it pretty simple. I always believe in my player group. Does that mean I think that we will win 22 games? No, it does but those fundamentals tend to…. We are in the business of being written off and pumped up; there is a good and there is bad. Tonight proved that.
Was there a specific instruction tonight about moving the play and being more daring?
Not particularly. Sometimes the message can get lost. If you are not winning the ball and not tackling. We didn't work hard to get the ball off. It is pretty hard to attack from your defensive 50 the whole time. Not particularly.
What was your message at three quarter time when it looked like the Bulldogs had gained some momentum?
We spoke about simple things that we needed to do and I thought they did them. We won the ball really well; we broke the tag on Bontempelli and put all of our big mids in there, our best mids – Sandilands, Fyfe, Mundy, Neale, both Hills on the wing, so we changed it up a bit. And we shared the workload all night. At the end of the night they were pretty fresh and ready to go, so I thought that was significant. Win the ball, make the tackle. It is sort of go forward. Then some layers under that but that is the foundation.
Was Mundy started forward about sharing the load or did you want a tall experienced target?
No, that is about sharing the load. I don't think that we are over-endowed with explosive tall forwards. Clearly we bought a couple of young blokes through. Mundy and Fyfe shared that. Gave Balic an opportunity and Connor Blakely. I thought his role on Bontempelli tonight was strong. We haven't tagged all year. Whether we will in the future I am not too sure. The game is inviting that back in with fewer rotations. I thought Weller, Logue and Balic did some good things and learned. I thought that Brady Grey's pressure, we’re talking about the new guys in. Joel Hamling stood up tonight. Some of the guys missed a lot of footy like Fyfe, Sandilands and Johnson coming to hand a little bit.
Do you think that a faster and smaller line-up made you more dangerous?
It tends to be, if you are faster and smaller makes you more dangerous. It wasn't easy dropping Jonathon Griffin. We just thought, teams are carrying them; not carrying them, playing two, but we just thought from where we are at, we just wanted to change it up a bit.
The Bulldogs seem to build a wall across the centre line in the third quarter, and your team struggled to get past. What did you change to get past that wall?
Sometimes you can invite the pressure with too much handball, it is about handballs breaking lines and handballs going around in circles providing pressure. They are a great small mid team. So we just thought we’d handball four or five times around our half back line when we should have kicked the ball forward. That’s really simple. It’s not rocket science. Sometimes it is just kicking forward and I think we started kicking forward.
The last quarter, your three big midfielders Stephen Hill, David Mundy and Nat Fyfe really stood up when the game was on the line.
Well we put Lachie Neale in there as well. Lachie started forward but he is really a midfielder. That was the mechanic. Walters was pushing forward. I thought Stephen Hill was pretty good and Nat Fyfe was good all night. But I think when you get them in as a collective, you need to share the load. That was a really good lesson for all of us tonight.
Does the third man up rule have a different affect what you thought it might on the ruck contest.
We are seeing teams go with fewer ruckman. I haven’t had a look at the opposition. I think Boyd, Campbell and those are pretty big guys. I think its horses for courses. We could play two next week. We just felt they are an enormous running team for where we are at, the structure of the team and who needed to come in and out. That was the decision. That doesn¹t mean we will go that way all year. There are times when you really need two (ruckman). In fairness, you wouldn’t want to be the ruckman playing forward when you are not getting the ball off the opposition. There’s not many easy goals and opportunities coming from turnovers, it was all from our defensive 50. I thought we eradicated our defensive 50 turnovers, any way you cut it. Round one and round two we were turning over the ball back of centre, which we had never done previously. We did it last year. That makes it really hard to feel good about yourself. Simply cutting out some of those turnovers.
If you could have your time again, would you start the season with a younger team like that?
No. I don’t live in the past you can’t keep looking backwards.
Is that the best your new forward line has looked all year?
I still thought we slaughtered some simple opportunities when we had free players out. I always say it¹s won and lost in the midfield. We didn’t put a lot of pressure on in the midfield last week. Tonight we put a lot on, we gave our backs the opportunity.
