How do you describe that?
I’m just really proud of the players. Clearly, the last two weeks have been disappointing and sometimes when that happens you go insular and become about the individuals. But from the very start of the week, it was about us getting back to playing team footy and the way we had before those two bad losses. The players invested in the week, we came with a clear plan and it didn’t all go our way but we stayed true to it and the positivity at half-time was really strong. We played a great brand of footy in that second half.

What was the key in that midfield battle, because they were all over you in that second quarter and you wasted some chances?
Josh Carr did a great job, he got our mids set up the right way, he wanted to give James Aish a job on Oliver because he’d had 15 possessions five minutes into the second quarter, so he was doing damage. That was the stoppage stuff, which we just tried to make it more of a contest. Repeat stoppages were okay, so we really locked down in there, which we did and then gradually got on top. The general play stuff was more just our transition and it’s amazing against a team as good as Melbourne, if your offence is not right, it’s hard to stop a team defensively. Those two aspects weren’t helping us defend our front half in the second quarter. In the third quarter we got deeper entries and we started connecting a little bit more, we were able to squeeze up and play the game in our front half. Probably like how we were in the first quarter but more importantly, we were able to score. It’s been a bit of an issue for us over the last couple of weeks with 30 and 40 points so at half-time there was positivity around but in the back of my mind I was thinking ‘geez I wouldn’t mind hitting the scoreboard more’. We got it to ground level, I thought our small forwards got to work and our aerial players were a bit more dominant as well. We talked about it all week, there’s your game plan, which is critical, and we weren’t executing that to our fullest the last couple weeks, but then there are the behaviours behind the scenes that really do drive your game plan, that’s your trademark and we wanted to have our best trademark game of the year. I think we’ve been a team that has had a real even contribution from all players and I feel like we got that again tonight, whereas the last couple of weeks we’ve probably had a few players that haven’t contributed as much as we would like.

Rory Lobb kept you in the game early.
He was great. He got back to his best competing and he got some reward for that competing tonight. Fantastic effort.

Do you dare to believe in what you can achieve this season after that?
It’s one game. I said it last week, you get ahead of yourself in this game, and you get what you deserve. We understand Melbourne was missing a couple of players tonight, they got some injuries early which were disruptive to them. We played our best footy, but we’ll review it like we reviewed the last couple of weeks, internally we’ll stick to the process and we understand there’s another big challenge next week. We want to make sure internally at our footy Club we’re as consistent as we can be. It’s a long season if you ride the ups and downs, so we’ll enjoy this win but we’re not getting past next week.

How much confidence can a win like this give you?
It does. Belief is really important and I don’t think we’ve been great when the scoreboard has been against us, so to be able to come in and tweak a few things at half-time and then largely just play our brand and slowly get on top. I think it’s those sorts of things you look at if the players believe that once they’re four goals down in a game, they just need to execute our footy. I think that belief is really strong and it’s something we probably haven’t built yet because in our six wins we might have been a goal or two goals down at some stage but quite often we jump into an early lead and the scoreboard is not there. The scoreboard pressure was well and truly there tonight and for our players to stick at it, that’s good belief.

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Can you talk about when you publicly said last week that the team had got ahead of themselves, were you stronger behind closed doors?
No, I wasn’t strong behind closed doors it was about setting a path out of it as a coach, believe it or not, when it come to the review it was really positive. In an AFL season, individually and as a team, not all goes your way and you are going to have some ups and downs. It is about sticking together and getting out of it together and that was pretty much the way we set up our review clearly there are a few things in wet weather conditions that we need to get better at both offensively and defensively, so we reviewed that and put that behind us and there are a lot things going on behind the scenes at footy clubs that you guys don’t get to see and our fans don’t get to see that impacts performances and for me to tell you those things would be making excuses, so we don’t go there but we try to get around our players behind the scenes and we try and get them back to their best footy. So, I was strong last week but I think our players got that sense and they came to work with the right attitude, and it was about setting a path out of the poor form.

Can you give us an insight into the past two weeks and what went wrong?
It is pretty obvious stuff if you look at leading into and after the North Melbourne game the amount of changes we had to our team, guys had COVID and we brought them straight back in and did they handle the humidity up in the Gold Coast? I don’t want to sit and make excuses about that but they are factors and maybe we needed to take that into consideration. But those games are gone now and done and we have learnt from them and next time we are in those conditions we will be better for it.

How has Matt Taberner pulled up?
He has a spasm in his back, which he does get every now and then and he seems to be in good spirits in the changerooms. It will take him a couple of days to get over it and he’ll be back.

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So, it isn’t the type of thing that keeps him sidelined for a few weeks?
He has had it two or three times over the last couple of years if you get it early in the week you’re no worries and can play with them and if you get it in-game it is really hard to function so hopefully it is a quick fix.

How significant was Melbourne not having Steven May?
We went into the game trying to tag him so that highlights the fact that we think he is a really important player for their defence but he does set up a lot of offence as well, so clearly losing him helped.

Griffin Logue playing in the forward line do you think that is something you could explore more this season?
I think it is he has been a very good back for us and I thought our backs were able to hold up without him down there and I thought he offered something down forward. The amount of goals he had a hand in just by creating a contest, because he is so strong, and he created a couple shots on goal himself, which we will do a bit of work on if we continue with this. But I thought he did a couple of chases and pressure acts that were really important as well and if you play three talls you need to make sure you keep putting the pressure on, so it’s probably a little bit of horses for courses but I think tonight against that backline it worked.

And obviously, Nat Fyfe returning what does the next week look like for him?
I don’t know yet, we will have to weigh that up Monday or Tuesday and see how he feels and see where his confidence levels are at and we will see where he starts his season.

And just on your scoring power tonight, did you think you had that in you?
Yes, we’ve been able to hit the scoreboard regularly and I think our scoring ability has improved this season but in the last couple of weeks in the conditions that took a bit of a dent and our confidence took a bit of a dent as well. But we’ve been able to mark the ball inside 50m and score and we’ve been able to score off better possession gains and we look really dangerous at ground level. I feel we got back to what we do best tonight.