It’s a big hole now, isn’t it?
Well clearly it’s not where we want to be. You can write about the hole, and will. My job is to try and improve our footy. That’s the only choice I have, so I’ll make a deliberate choice. We thought we made some inroads tonight, we had some real moments. Incredibly poor start, really got slaughtered out of the middle again, but then we made some adjustments and were really quite strong out of there. Big time footy is about starts out of the middle and we were poor and big time footy in the last quarter, we went 1-5 early out of there, that put us under some pressure. So my choice is to work with my coaches that we'll get better in there and improve our footy. We thought our ball movement at times was quick, we moved it, we scored, but again some terrible turnovers. And I thought at times because we went so quick they scored quite easily. So I walk in here looking to improve our footy. So to our fans and members, we’ve got a coaching group and a playing group that I thought gave pretty good effort tonight, not perfect but pretty good. That gives us a really solid foundation to try and improve our footy at the review and at training. That’s the world I live in. Everyone else can write about permutations and finals, that’s not the world I live in and haven’t ever.
The two hours you saw out there, do you feel better that the wheel might slowly be starting to turn?
Well we’ve got plenty of work to do. Clearly we’ve shifted how we play a little bit and with that comes a premium on some kicking skills and there were some terrible turnovers. But again, I feel I summed it up, when the game was up for grabs our centre-square bounce work in the first 10 minutes was deplorable for whatever reason. Then I thought the leadership of Fyfe and Pavlich and Johnson, our senior players really dug in and we thought we were right in the game. There were some terrible turnovers, not getting the ball over the boundary, I think we turned it over 4.2 in our d-50, so that’s a bit of a common thread. But at three-quarter time I thought it was anyone’s game.
How much did the late goals in the second and third quarter kill you?
Yeah there was a bit of red time stuff, a couple of turnovers, that’s been a weakness all year. But we spoke about it in the box, graft a goal, get one back, and maybe we could but we were pretty keen for them to keep pushing on. I think a couple of those were skill errors, so look, it wasn’t ideal. They’re a very good team, but in saying that we thought we had a real opportunity. But you can’t give teams a 26-point start, come from behind, that saps a lot out of you so when it’s big time at three-quarter time they dug in and we’d probably spent a little bit to catch up and that was the end of it.
Talking points after Kangaroos loss
How do you eradicate those costly mistakes?
We keep improving our method, keep training it. At the end of the day we just don’t roll on here. We’ve got players that we want to bleed in, so we’ll look at that as well. But I thought there were some strong performances, I think we slaughtered the ball a little bit. It’s a bit when to go, when to woe really, that’s the main stuff. We got scored too heavily against too easily a few times.
Is there a problem with starts? Because the same thing happened against the Bulldogs.
Yeah and Gold Coast. Centre bounce, we’ve identified it. In the past I might have sort of beaten up on someone, but we’ve had some changes through there, change of personnel of coaches, I’ve matured, I’ve evolved. I was going off in the box a little bit, but give some solutions, work with them. We clearly need to grow some coaches and our system in there, but I think in the end we’ve kicked 5.2 out of there to 2.3. But again, when the game was up for grabs and we needed that, we’ve got pretty good personnel in there and we expect to be going a bit better.
Pavlich made some good contributions when he went in the centre?
He’s been a great player, but we want to unload. We’d obviously like some competency of talls in our front half. But we’ve got a young Taberner who is grinding his way, from where he’s from he’s probably ahead of schedule, so we’re trying to get some of those personnel. We’ve got to draft some in to grow them, so we would like a little bit more there but we’re making do with what we’ve got.
Can you give us some insight into how it got to this? It seems to have happened so quick.
Well not really, we’ve always butchered it a little bit. There’s some different method, some different personnel. You don’t need much to go wrong to be 0-4.
What did you make of Jon Griffin’s effort?
I thought really slow start, disappointed in his first 10 minutes and he knows that. After that I thought he was pretty good. I thought the ruck work early of Todd Goldstein in the last quarter, pushing the ball forward, getting it their side of the circle and out to space was pretty significant. We’ve had that feedback but I expect him to grow and improve. I’ve got a lot of respect for Jon.
Is Griffin OK, he looked to be limping in the rooms?
Yeah he’s OK, there’s nothing significant. You would expect them to limp and be sore, there’d be a lot of sore boys. It was a pretty physical game
What was the message to the players after the game?
Just what I’ve given to you guys. I don’t have a bag for them and a bag for you guys. Slow start out of the middle, I thought we dug in as a team. To be honest I thought, ‘this smells a bit, this smells early’. Then they dug in with the character they possess and they led our young players and I thought we were right in the game. But again some easy goals at certain times and probably some inaccuracy, I think they missed a couple. But when it needed to be won, then clearances were 1-8 and 1-5 out of the middle. In today’s footy there’s not that many around the ground stoppages. We played a lot quicker than them probably and quicker than we should have and probably slaughtered it. That’s going to be that balance but, yeah, we liked a fair bit of today. We sit here disappointed at 0-4, but we want to build a model that’s really good and clearly we need to improve in some areas.
Do you expect David Mundy back next week?
I think unlikely. He may get there, he might not, but it’s not really about personnel for me. Peel didn’t play, it was unfortunate guys who would have played for us, Ethan Hughes and Connor Blakely, got injured the other week. But overall I was pleased with the effort.
Are you likely to make many changes next week?
I haven’t thought about it.
Are the players hurting?
Are they hurting? Yeah we’re all hurting. It’s our passion, it’s what we do. I clearly like winning. We’re driven but we’re not going to melt under the lights of a press conference or 0-4, we’ve got greater character than that. We want to improve our football, that’s the only solution that I can see. If we improve our football we’ll win games. We want to fight on. There’s some big results, we’ve played some very good teams, there’s no doubt about that, but you look around and there’s some real blow-outs. I thought against the Bulldogs we were terrible, I thought Gold Coast we did a lot right but slaughtered our centre bounces.
I thought West Coast, against a very good team, I thought for two and a half quarters we were pretty good. Slow start here but bar the first 15 minutes of the last, I’d take it against who I think are a top-four team as well. I think we’ve got some better footy in us, just the ledger doesn’t reflect some of the footy we’ve played.
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