You tried some things early, maybe just a lack of polish didn’t help. Talk us through what your plan of attack was?
You can’t come up here and be conservative against a really mature team so we wanted to the take the game on. We probably got the balance a little bit wrong in terms of handball and kick early and we didn’t execute the basics enough, had some dropped marks when we went forward. I liked the dare we showed and the intent we showed with ball in hand, we are a handball team and early in the year our handball game was up and going and created a lot of opportunities for us. We probably over did it at times, but I liked the fact that we showed a bit more dare.

Are you worried about the confidence in the group off the back of a few heavy defeats in a row?
You’re always trying to fight the risk of players internalising and getting caught up in doubt so we need to keep giving them the confidence to execute what we’re trying to execute and there were some positive signs of that today so we will keep reinforcing the positives as best we can.

You had another heavy defeat in contested balls and clearances do you feel it is a similar story week-in-week-out?
We did fix it there for a couple of weeks, earlier in the season it was our contest at clearance and that, in the last couple of weeks, has reappeared. Particularly in the second half it hurt us. I think we were minus 22 contested balls at stoppage. Post-stoppage, we were in the positive. The second half it started hurting us on the scoreboard, they were good as eight goals from stoppage in the second half. You just can’t do that. You try to support the stoppage but as the game went on it didn’t seem to have an effect. We need to keep re-schooling our midfield and go to work in there.

He can’t fix all the problems by themselves but how far away is Nat Fyfe?
He will play some footy next week if the weekend goes well.

Play some footy, so yes?
I am not sure where he will play. We haven’t discussed that yet it has been a week-by-week proposition. Until he gets the all-clear, we haven’t really broached where he is going to play and his transition back into the team.

Do you have to keep trying new players in the middle just to see what you might find?
We’ll keep changing the mix up. It was probably the most mids we have played all year, we will keep exploring options. Matty Johnson got a great taste for it in there today with a seasoned midfield, so we will keep giving him opportunity in there. Neil Erasmus was obviously the sub, so we will keep spinning the numbers through there and keep giving some guys a chance.

On Matty Johnson he shows some composure, doesn’t he?
I think a few of our younger players probably didn’t handle the speed of the game early. We were the ones putting speed into the game. But just our basics early from a few of our younger guys, once the game settled our younger guys, ‘Johnno’ in particular, started to pick up the pace of the game and a couple of the things he did in traffic were great. We have seen some signs but we need to be more consistent with it.

Are you worried about that tackle on Zorko?
I don’t really like to comment on those things, the match review panel will have a look at it. He got reported and Zorko kept playing, so we will see where it lands.

Was there an injury there with Sam Sturt or was it a balance thing subbing him out?
It was more of a balance thing, we wanted to get Neil in to the game and it was the right time to get him into the game. We thought we needed another midfielder and another forward around the ball and he came on and did that.

Do you have an update on Heath Chapman and his injury from a few days ago?
We haven’t got a timeframe on it yet, but he is going to miss a fair bit of time. It was not a standard hamstring injury.

What did you think of Ashcroft’s goal?
It was pretty good. Cameron kicked one the week before, they might be trying that sort of stuff at training. I thought Michael Walters’ goal was pretty handy. They will be neck and neck for goal of the week, I would have imagined. But Brisbane kicked a lot of good goals unfortunately.

What did you make of Alex Pearce’s game, he copped a lot of criticism during the week. I felt like he played a good game?
I thought he played well. He got his positioning right, I thought he attacked the footy. I thought his contest was really strong and he got back to the form he showed a couple of weeks ago against Gold Coast.

You were happy to show a bit of dare, is that the challenge now to make sure they don't shy away from that and keep at it? 
We have to keep giving confidence to our players and educate them on the way we want to play. We always want to take the game on between the arcs. Our issues with our ball movement is when we get deep entries against and we are getting locked in our back half. So we will keep going to work on that. Sometimes it's using our numbers, sometimes it's kick/mark and sometimes we just need to trust the contest ahead and set up well for that contest. We can’t keep getting stuck in the back half like we have the last couple of weeks.

Is that something you want to keep improving, taking the game on?
We have always tried to push opportunities to bounce out when we win the ball back, so we will continue to coach that.