They got on top of you fairly early, what were the major issues?
Contest. Clearly their contest method was better than ours, they were cleaner, got the basics right and they worked harder from contest to contest. 

Was the rain part of the issue?
I don’t think so, they were cleaner on the inside and they got to the outside. Early in each quarter they dominated field position. To some degree, we were able to break even as the quarters went on, but the damage was done. We need to get to work, we’re not as consistent with our roles as we were earlier in the season. Some players have dropped their form and our contest wasn’t as even as it was earlier in the year, so we’ve got some work to do.

Did they bring an intensity to the game that you weren’t able to match?
Possibly. I know it would’ve looked like that, but I just think they brought a stronger method with them as well. When we won our contests, our handballs didn’t take us anywhere and when they won their contests, they got on the outside of us way too easily. Like I said we’ve got some work to do. 

The fans feel there is a gap between Fremantle and the best teams in the competition, what do you think from a coach’s perspective?
I can understand why they think that now. We had a disappointing night, we aren’t in the form we’d like to be, we aren’t in the form we were in earlier in the season, so I can understand why you’d say that.

From your perspective do you think that can be turned around?
Yes, I do. But we better be quick about it. We need to be more consistent in games, we need to have more players executing their role and we need to be more consistent across the board and the contest, we’re relying on too few at the moment.

Did you try and get the players to take a few more risks in the game a bit later on?
Not really no. It was probably the last quarter when it was raining and at three-quarter time we just wanted to close it down a little bit and practice a few wet weather things that we’ve been talking about but haven’t had the opportunity to practice. Early in the game when Brandon Walker got it off half back… but we’re just relying on those players, we’re not relying on our method as much as we should be. We’re caught in between whether we should go fast or slow at times and it was just really unpredictable to each other tonight. We need to get back to being on the same page, especially with our ball movement. 

Matt Taberner’s been out of form for a while now, what do you do about that?
Just keep working with him. We need to get him up and going, he’s not on his own though. We’ve got a few guys across the board that are down on their form and haven’t recaptured the form they were in earlier in the season. We’ve been having some good performances at Peel as well. They play tomorrow, we need to have a good look at that and we need to get a more even balance across the board. 

Do you reckon 'Tabs' in particular has had injuries along the way that have hurt, would he benefit from a run in the seconds? 
We’ll have to weigh that up, we need to get Tabs going so whatever’s best for him we’ll look at. 

Injury wise how did you come out of the game?
Fine, all good. 

In terms of getting the confidence back in some of those players out of form, what do you do? As a coach how do you go about that?
I think it starts with simplifying the message, breaking it down to what’s important in their games, getting them back to the basics and getting to work. There’s no magic formula, get your mindset right and get to work. 

Probably wasn’t on his own tonight Tabs, what else do you think is missing from your forward line at the moment? 
I think our method with our ball movement, we’ve probably become a little bit too one-dimensional and bombing it in and hoping for either a pack mark or a crumb. That’s my gut feel without watching it, and I feel like that’s happened the last few weeks we just need to get back to connecting at the right time and allowing our forwards to be dangerous. I feel like we’ve just become a bit one-dimensional down there and it just came out too easy on the back of that. 

The pressure from your smalls, is that at the level it was earlier in the season? 
No definitely not, but I think our pressure all over the ground has dropped to some degree and that comes back to the method that I was talking about before. When you get stuck inside and the team to the outside of you it’d be hard to put pressure on. Every time they kicked it long to a contest in the first half they got out the back of us, it’s hard to put pressure on in those situations, so we need to get our method right. I thought we tidied up a bit of that stuff in the second half but the damage was done.

Is physical tiredness part of that, round 20 now? 
I don’t want to give our players that excuse, so I’m not going to say it. They put their hand up to play, they’re available to play. Every team goes through a bit of fatigue this time of year, it’s something we’ve got to learn to fight through.

What do you make of the surface of the ground? 
It’s improved where they’ve laid some new turf, it’s still slippery but it’s the same for both teams. I thought they handled it a lot better than us, we slipped around a bit too much and they held their feet. That’s on us, not the ground staff. 

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