Congratulations on the win, what are your thoughts on the match?
There are a lot of thoughts, I thought they out hunted us early. They won critical contests. When they surged it forward, when we surged it forward, they won critical contests. I thought their pressure was really good, we overused handball. I thought we were just a little bit disjointed, we had some players down on form who become insular. That was up until half time and then we managed to fight our way out of it and I thought that third quarter we took a little more territory, I thought our tall forwards went to work and gave us at least a contest and got it to ground level, and then we got to work at ground level and started kicking some goals. I don’t know whether we were the better team on the day, but we got the win, which is sometimes all you have to do.

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What way do you think that first half panned out like that after two really good wins, in two weeks?
Credit to the opposition, I’ve been saying it to our players and I’ve been saying it in the media all week. Hawthorn has played some really good footy against some really good teams. Ran Carlton to the line, beat Geelong, ran Melbourne to the line, ran Collingwood all the way, there’s some good form line there and they came up with a plan, their players were hungry and executed it and put us under enormous pressure. I think sometimes good teams just need to find a way to win and it wasn’t pretty but we found a way.

There was a moment during the third where you went over handballing and with the pressure that they put you under, you just charged through the middle took the game on, and kicked the ball forward and you get a goal out of it. How important was that moment do you reckon for the team to realise if we get back to how we played then that’s the result?
That was an important part, I thought Blake in particular had a few important moments in that period of time. I just think our mindset changed at halftime, and we just were a little bit more prepared for a scrap and I think we wanted it a little bit too easy in the first half and we just prepared ourselves for a bit more of a scrap and to do the hard things and be a bit more desperate in the second half, and our desperation got us a few goals in our front half and our desperation saved us a few goals in our back half. It wasn’t perfect or pretty, but like I said sometimes you just need to find a way.

Blake looked devastated about the hamstring, do you know how serious it is at the moment?
Just talking to him in the rooms and we haven’t had an update from the docs but he doesn’t think it’s overly serious. He’s disappointed, as all players are when they get injured but fingers crossed it’s not on the too-high of the serious scale.

He also had a big hammy first year you were here so you would have been pretty nervous?
Like I said he feels like it’s not a big one, as is with these things you’ve got to wait for it to cool off and get scanned and we’ll update everyone.

I guess it just shows once you’re out of the side it can be hard to get back in, do you think that played a part in his thinking as well, he’s done so much hard work to establish his spot?
I hope not, I think runs on the board count for something when players come back from injury and he’s had a really good first half of the season when he’s been out there. We would probably reward that form I'd imagine.

Was that handball overuse purely because of the pressure Hawthorn was putting on?
A bit of both, I thought first quarter, probably the first 10 minutes of the game we got away with it, and our hands although it looked dangerous at times we got through and then their pressure lifted and we tried to do the same thing. Over-handball, probably brought on the pressure as much as anything. I’ll have to have a look at the tape but there were just blatant missed opportunities to get the ball inside 50 and put them under pressure and instead we put ourselves under pressure and it led to a turnover and they went down the other end and put us under pressure. We need to find a balance for that and today probably we skewed ourselves to overuse

What did you make of Fyfe’s first match back and what was his forward midfield percentage?We aimed for about 50/50 and we keep exploring different ways we can improve that or get the percentage right or help him have more impact on the game. I thought he was a little bit rusty, but I expected that. He played probably how we expected, and he expected. So, it was a good one to get under the belt. Clearly, he will only get better and I think everyone enjoyed seeing him out there and I did as well.

How hard is it to get that right? Is it still an experiment?I think with these things you always start with an ideal split in mind and then you adjust to what the game is telling you and the amount of times we needed him on ball because we were getting beaten around the clearance and there were times when he put himself forward because he felt that is where he could have the most impact or that is where his energy was best spent but we will keep exploring that and finding ways where we can find more flexibility in his role.

How does his presence affect Will Brodie? What did you make of that?I don’t think Will’s role changed much; he just had a game where he didn’t impact as much as he has. But I think we had a lot of players that didn’t impact the game the way they would have liked to. We don’t expect them all to dominate but we had players not executing the role as they have in the last couple of weeks and when you get that up to a number where you let the opposition into the game, then the game is on a knife’s edge but we discussed that at half-time and at the end of the game. I thought some of the players who had a down first half actually lifted in the second half and that is a good sign.

Do you think as Fyfe finds his touch, do you think that messes up the way that the midfield gels together with him still trying to find form?I don’t what happened today was on the back of him coming back into the team. I thought Hawthorn came with a real determined focus to hunt us and put us under enormous pressure. I thought Andy Brayshaw and Caleb Serong had really good games but we had a few guys that were a bit down in their form but I think that had nothing to do with Nat.

Griffin Logue was involved in a couple of marking contests in that third quarter. What do you make of that experiment and what happens when Matt Taberner returns?We have a couple of weeks to work that out. I thought Griff in the first half probably found out how hard it is to be a forward sometimes and playing on a really good defender in James Sicily, like you said, I thought he was one of the players after half-time that was able to give us a really strong contest, took some important marks, halved some important contests and he had a couple of opportunities in the last quarter where I thought he was going to really show his speed but lost his footing but I thought his second half was really strong. I think he is a pretty flexible player for us down forward. He is able to put good pressure on and I think his ground ball is pretty strong as well and he can play roles for us. I still think he can play a role for us up forward when ‘Tabs’ comes back.

Do you look forward to the bye?
I think it has come at a good time for us, we have a good opportunity to refresh. There are a few guys who are playing really sore, so it will be a good opportunity for them to give their body a rest and mentally refresh as well as physically and come back to work later next week and get cracking on the next nine games of the home and away season.