A powerful second half from the team?
Yes, it was really good just to have that energy, that was probably the thing that I was a little bit worried about. It was our sixth game in 28 days and we were rally flat earlier on in the week but we sparked up from Thursday onwards. I went in really hopeful that we could produce an effort like that but I was worried about the mental fatigue a little bit, but the group just responded so well as they always do.
 
How do you think the return home sparked them and bought that energy for them?
To be honest, I don’t think it did initially, when we first got back Tuesday it was really quite flat when we got into our training session. I think the thing that sparked us was obviously when it changed to the seven-day quarantine, and it wasn’t going to be as long. The other thing to be honest was that we’ve now got a bye next week so the players knew that we could come in and just give everything today and we could have the rest that the girls deserve.

You looked a lot better going forward this week than you have the past couple, is that how you saw it?
Absolutely, that was the best part of our game, our ball movement. Funnily enough we’ve become a really good into the breeze team, our backs are holding up really well. I think against the Bulldogs we scored all three goals into the breeze and then this week we scored five out of our seven, so the ball movement into the breeze has been really good. We have to work going with the breeze and that’s a little bit harder because sides tend to drop numbers back but it’s an area that we want to improve. We haven’t been able to train a lot over this journey because they’ve been having five day breaks, so it’s been very light training and very little contact work, so we couldn’t do very meaningful training. We’re now really looking forward to having a little bit of a rest but having some solid training sessions in the lead up to some really tough opponents in Adelaide and Melbourne.
 
Mikayla Morrison today made the most of her opportunities, can you talk a little bit on her?
Mikayla was unlucky last year as she was due to debut in round one and then had appendicitis and then missed the whole season with that. This year she was in Melbourne during the off-season and got caught in lockdown and couldn’t do anything. She came back nowhere near the level of fitness required so she’s had to work really hard to get to that level and to her credit she did. She reached her 2km time trial target while we were in the hub in Melbourne and Jay Van Berlo did a lot of work with her as well as the forward line coach helping her through that. We could see her talent today, we also used her in bursts through the middle, without Bowers last week we left Miller and O’Sullivan in the middle all day and that robbed us a bit forward so we thought who could we throw her in there today to pinch a few minutes, so that Miller can spend a bit of time forward and Mikayla did that and did it very well. We were rapt with her game, she’s going to have some games where she doesn’t have that impact that she did today but as long as her effort is there because she’s a really strong tackler as well, we’ll be really happy. 

What does the next two weeks look like for you?
Recovery tomorrow, and then we’re going to give the girls some time off Monday and Tuesday. Some time to reconnect with their families and just relax, then we’ll train Wednesday and Friday, give them the whole weekend off again to just really freshen up and then we’ll go back into our normal training load before we hit Adelaide and Melbourne.
 
Where is Roxy Roux at?
It was hamstring awareness and she actually sat out the last half. She felt it going up the stairs after half time and it was one of those line ball ones, so we said we’ll keep her warm in the third quarter if we needed to and, in the end, we didn’t so we put her away. I’m not sure exactly how bad it is but with the two week break she may be a chance to get up.
 
Matilda missing the second game with concussion, where is she at?
Both Sergeant and Franklin are good to go if we were playing this week, so they’ll both be right in contention for that. Obviously with Matilda’s history it was a concern, but the good thing was the incident was an incident that anybody would’ve got concussed from and she’s recovered really well so that was really pleasing.
 
How do you feel the team is placed now?
There’s still a long way to go as far as playing the good sides. Adelaide are obviously the trend-setters at the moment, and I think there’s Melbourne, ourselves and the Kangaroos who have all just lost the one game, so there’s not a lot between those sides. As we saw last week North Melbourne were a little bit too good for us, so there’s still a lot to play for and those two games will decide where we fit on the ladder. We’ve been aiming all year for a top-four finish to get at least one home final and that will probably be decided in those two games.
 
What about the midfield battle, did you have to address that at half time?
This was the first time Carlton has had their full midfield in for the year, Hill and Egan are obviously good players, they came back last week and Bri Moody was there. Moody and Lauren Pearce are obviously the competitions best two rucks, so we knew it was going to be a battle through there and I thought Hayley was solid in the first half and then outstanding in the second. I thought Gabby O’Sullivan was the same and then getting some minutes through East, Morrison and Toth through there, they did really well to halve those battles and in the end our run probably got over the top of them as well.