David Mundy tonight had a big game and really steadied the ship?
It’s really important that we acknowledge the milestone. We spoke during the week that you need to honour it with deed because word is easy and I thought for the majority of the night, really all of the night we were giving our best effort. The mechanics weren’t perfect, obviously, and we were really challenged by their 12 premiership players and premiership midfield with (Marcus) Bontempelli, (Jack) Macrae, (Tom) Liberatore, (Lachie) Hunter. So we knew that they had the acid put on them, Anzac Day, they would really galvanise and come over. They’re the number one contested ball, ground ball team in the AFL – we won the contested ball by 13 and matched them at ground ball, so in the contest we were fierce enough and we thought we honoured the occasion with great effort and the respect and the esteem that it deserved. It’s was great to see Matthew Pavlich in the rooms (before the game) with Aaron Sandilands to present David his jumper with his wife Sally and his kids and his parents. It’s hard and it’s a grind in AFL footy but occasionally there’s some special moments that bob up, this was one and we really enjoyed the week. We enjoyed today and I thought our Docker fans were amazing… noisy, and really enjoyed it. And to see David enjoy himself - it’s nice, you don’t always get the result, emotion doesn’t always get it done our actions got it done so it was a pretty special day.
He kicked two crucial goals at the end of the third and won a crucial clearance and really steadied everything.
He’s not getting to the end, he’s bursting through the 300s. We spoke over the summer about how we would like to get our midfield back together and intact, bring (Adam) Cerra and (Andrew) Brayshaw through, we just feel with (Nat) Fyfe, (Sean) Darcy and (Rory) Lobb that we can get first hands on it. They were challenged tonight but he’s been exceptional, it’s one week at a time, I know he’s keen to go on we’re keen obviously for him to go on, but again, let the cobblers do the cobbling. Let’s enjoy this moment and enjoy the win, we’ll do a sharp review and prepare. Adelaide had a really good win today against a quality St Kilda outfit. We saw today how even the competition is. I think that’s the real feedback for everyone, that if you don’t bring your best effort and your best version of yourself, you’re going to be challenged. To our credit in the last quarter I thought we really owned the first 15 minutes and put a gap on them that we needed to. We got to three quarter time and were incredibly confident in how well we were going to run it out so that’s a credit to our players preparation.
What’s changed for Brandon Matera? Is it just the personnel around him or is it something that he’s been doing?
It’s a really complex formula, it’s called hard work. It was about going to the break and relaxing mentally but working physically. Brandon will say he had his best break for hard work, came back in condition and he trained really hard. We could go through all of his sprint percentages at training, but he has elite small forward work rate and we know he’s got the god-given talent of the ability to play. When you put those two things together, talent times motivation, it equals performance.
Michael Walters had a brilliant first half, but it looked like he wasn’t fit enough to go into the midfield in the second half?
No he was fit, we just made a decision to put him forward, I thought he looked really dangerous. It’s a long year and he’s not the biggest man in the world but he’s a very special player. It’s a real grind in the midfield, Bontempelli’s big, Liberatore too, so sometimes we get him to the outside and he can showcase his outside ability which I thought he did.
Your leaders at the moment, they are really leading the way aren’t they?
Yes, but it is across the board. Ethan Hughes 50-50 ball, Nathan Wilson, (Sam) Switkowski’s chase, (Travis) Colyer’s chase down, it’s a weight of numbers performance. The biggest thing about leading in AFL football is on gameday you stand up. Mundy, Fyfe, Alex Pearce, Walters and Hamling - I thought he was amazing against his old club, it is always emotional for Joel and he played a premiership there, so they set the tone and everyone jumps in and follows. That all started pre-season, there’s no magic on game day, they have done the work. We will have sharp feedback, they challenged us on a number of fronts, I thought we adapted in the end but there are some lessons to learn and take it to Adelaide.
What was the plan for Bontempelli tonight?
No plan we haven’t tagged all year, they just go and play and make good decisions with and without the ball. We have employed tags in the past, we haven’t done that maybe one game we did, I can’t remember but we haven’t employed it, we just made good decisions - attack and defend when you need to and we find that standing us in good stead.
What is your thinking with Connor Blakely?
Haven’t even thought about it to be fair, just finished an AFL game and I will get to that during the week.
Six games in, do you have a feel for where you sit in the pecking order?
Yes 4-2, it’s a really even competition. It is going to be a war of attrition, it’s going to be prepare well, recover well, and then what’s left over is luck, you need a bit of luck. If you look around there’s some great players going down not through lack of effort or execution but sometimes it’s just luck. We need a bit of that as well, as everyone does.
