Where did it go wrong for you Justin?
Probably ground ball. I thought they were better with their third and fourth efforts. I thought our first maybe one or two efforts was ok around the bobbled ball, but I thought they stayed at it longer and once they won those contests, or finally won those contests, they were able to get on the outside of us. I didn’t think we had brought the right energy in the first half, especially some aspects of our game, we got beaten by what we scouted which is disappointing and then the second half we just couldn’t make any of our inside 50’s. I think we had 40 inside 50’s in the second half for two goals. That’s not ideal.

The way you were chipping the ball around, is that how you want to play or is that how you were forced to play?
A bit of both. I don’t mind us chipping the ball around but there’s got to be some method to it. I thought we just went lateral to occupy the ball and that’s not really how we want to play, so we need to get the balance right between making the opposition defend and not having enough dare. Funnily enough at the start of the third quarter, we chipped it around the block which wasn’t necessarily the message at quarter time but it was probably one of our better periods of the game. So I’m not saying we are going to go there, but we just need to make sure we’re balanced with what we are trying to do in offence.

How did you see the forward line functioning?
Clearly, the outcome says it didn’t function the way we would have liked. Before we jump to any conclusions, I’ll review it and have a look at our entries. We were kicking to an outnumber a fair bit and asked our forwards to compete against an outnumber. I thought we let the ball over the back a bit too much all over the ground which really played into their hands.

Was the execution going inside 50 a forward issue or a midfield issue?
It’s a lot of things. At times it’s a midfield issue because we could be making better decisions. But there’s times when the mids are under pressure and they just need to get it in there and we just need to make more of it. Some of it comes down to probably a lack of dare up the field and then a lack of fast play opportunities we were able to set up. So we need to review that and tweak it.

Do you need to test a number of things… whether that ball movement and your forward structure can work?
It’s round one. A lot’s built up in round one. We’re disappointed but we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We’ve got to make sure we’re really rational with the way we go about reviewing the game and give some things some time to implement. We’re not going to rush and change a lot on the back of one performance.

The lack of energy in the first half, how does that happen in round one?
I think it was probably more in one area of our game, which is usually a strength, I thought we defended our front half really average in the first half and lacked a bit of connection between roles and lines, and that sort of fed our long down the lines. Our defensive long down the lines were poor and they were allowed to speed up which is what we scouted and that was disappointing. I don’t know it could be a number of different things, the last game of the weekend. But credit to St Kilda, I don’t want to take anything away from them. I thought they played with really good dare and energy and enthusiasm, and we probably just didn’t match that often enough.

Have you mentioned to the players that you’re going to be targeted more as a result of last season?
It’s a wake-up call. We need to make sure we react the right way. We’ve got a pretty short turn around, six days into North Melbourne so we need to regroup and get on with it.

How did you see Luke Jackson’s first game for the Club?
He will build on that. I thought he gave himself enough opportunities, probably let a few balls over the back which he would have liked to have brought to the front so he can get a second crack at them or mark. We threw him on ball for something different in the last quarter and he won the first centre bounce so we could at that a little bit more as well to try and get him get into the game.

Any injuries?
No, looks like it’s pretty good.

Anyone back next week?
We’ll have to wait and see, I haven’t thought about that yet.

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