Brisbane have stamped their authority, but the girls showed a bit of character in the third to make a game of it?
Yes. Brisbane are obviously a very strong team, particularly up here and to our girls credit when the game could have really got away from them in the third quarter, we dug deep and showed that when we can get the game on our terms we can be competitive with the best teams. But at the moment, well today, we didn’t do it for long enough.
What did you like from your new look team with five debutants?
It was really difficult for them. There’s no easing your way into it against a side like Brisbane so they’ll learn a lot from that. We think that they’ve shown us a fair bit and all of them will play better than what they did today and they weren’t alone. We had a lot of our other players down as well but that’s a credit to Brisbane and the pressure that they put on and probably for us we need to apply a lot more pressure than what we did today.
How are Janelle Cuthbertson and Jess Low after the head clash?
It wasn’t ideal having two of our best lock down defenders out so early in the game. Janelle Cuthbertson with a broken nose but no concussion which was good, so we kept her off for precautionary reasons. The game was probably beyond our reach at that stage anyway so we will see how she goes. And Jess Low who actually felt ok but failed the concussion test so unfortunately, we’ll take no chance with her and she will be out with the concussion protocols.
What can we expect from you this season. Do you learn much out of that one game?
Absolutely. That’s what we spoke about afterwards. We’ve had a bit of an interrupted pre-season with a few different things. But to come up here and play the best, I think Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide everyone identifies those as the top three sides. And we want to challenge them and we will learn a lot from today, that the run away from stoppage, the power running that they do to outnumber at the next contest, that’s something that we’re capable of and we’ve got the fitness and the running power to do that but it was that reaction time that Brisbane did today to make it look like it was so easy, because they always have extra players at the contest. So things like that we can learn. Our backline ended up being very disorganised today but that’s no surprise when we had the two injuries and also Laura Pugh out (suspension) who is also one of our prime back line organisers. She will be back next week as well. So it’s great to play this game round one and say there’s a lot to learn out of that and we think we can learn pretty quickly.
Is that something you can fix in a week?
I think so because we’ve got the fitness base and all our data says that we can do it but today we were just a little bit off. We haven’t had the ideal preparation with our two games we’ve had leading into it. I watched Brisbane and StKilda last week and I thought that the quality of that practice game was a lot better than the quality of the games we played in. So today is that sharp reminder of what’s needed. Also Hayley Miller and Kiara Bowers hadn’t played a game at all, had limited pre seasons, so for them today they both played ok and played out the game alright. They’ll be a lot better for it and we expect a lot of our other players to step up as well.
They were pretty good today those two?
They were, I thought Kiara was slow to start by her standards and Hayley actually started alright but we had to play her for a lot of forward minutes and the ball wasn’t getting there so it was having one of your prime movers out of the game for so long, she should be up next week on full minutes and full availability.
You showed when you got the ball forward you generated scoring shots.
Yes and I thought we looked dangerous at times too with the ones that didn’t even work out. Because we are quite quick down there even without our talls. Roxy Roux, Amy Franklin and Aine Tighe, even though they are tall they’ve also got good leg speed and Hayley was down there with a few others. So we think if we can generate enough inside 50s that we can definitely kick enough goals.
