Trent must be mixed emotions at the moment?
Overall (we're) pretty happy with the performance, never happy when you lose obviously, but I thought it was our best performance of the year when you take into consideration the quality of the opposition. We didn’t defend as well as we’d like, but I thought we played a lot more of our brand of footy for most of the game.

The improvement over the last three or four weeks – is it as quick as you expected?
No we’ve still got the talent there. I think it’s come along probably as we’d expect. Two six day breaks and a five day break, this week we’ve had a 10 day break and could do some decent training. Our training on Wednesday night was our best training for the year. I was hoping that would translate to some good ball movement today which it did, but just a few things we can still work on.

You claimed clearances today against last year’s runner up and inside 50s – you’d take that?
Some really positive signs to win the clearance battle and the inside 50s against a side like Melbourne so that’s a real big tick and hopefully we can maintain that going forward.

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How did you rate the pressure today? 
We identified that Melbourne like to use the ball by hand and if you just all go at the ball carrier they’re going to flip it out. I thought in the whole we did that quite well, but there were still a couple of moments when we got in or we hit a tackle that didn’t quite stick and they’d get their hands and get going. I don’t think that was a slight on our pressure but more how good they are. Their inside-mid players with West and Hanks and Purcell are very good at that and that makes them so hard to beat.

What about Kiara Bower’s role, what was different about her game today?
She’s such a competitor and hates losing that when things aren’t going well she naturally goes to a fight instinct and maybe worries about her opponent too much. It’s a rare thing for coaches to have to worry about with that, but it is with Kiara. Last week we changed her role at halftime to get her to hunt the footy and she did that well last week and I thought she did it really well today. Her first half was outstanding and a big reason why we were up with Melbourne for three quarters.

From a fitness point of view are you at your peak at this point of the season?
It wasn’t really fitness that we were worried about and to be honest that (pre-season) plan didn’t really go to plan because we had so much unavailability late in that pre-season block so that didn’t really work out how we wanted it to. I don’t think our fitness has been an issue, just our synergy and I think today, with some of our ball movement, showed we are getting there in that regard.

What do you think happened in that last quarter to have such a dramatic turn? 
I think the wind was a big factor and probably why we were close at three quarter time. I don’t think it was a one goal game, we could’ve been a little bit further behind with no wind. In the last quarter we tried to win the game. We said we’re not here to have an honourable two goal loss so we opened up – we tried to attack even though we were into the breeze. So it leaves it open to turnovers, they had a lot of space in front of the ball and they managed to kick goals. I don’t think it was a lack of effort  they did win the clearance battle in the last quarter. We actually started really well in the first few minutes, we had two shots on goal and we only got one point out of those two shots. We needed to get one goal there to get us some momentum but then it was a slingshot the other way and they scored which made it difficult.

How does it feel as a coach watching one of your former players bob up and kick a couple of goals? Are you happy for her?
It’s one of those things. We would love someone like Sabreena Duffy’s ability on our list but that wasn’t to be. So good luck to her and good luck to Melbourne. Very talented player obviously and in a good side, with lots of opportunities, she’s going to score goals for sure.