Was winning a big focus at three-quarter time or did that just happen?

It just happened, we were disappointed with our third quarter. I just thought we weren’t doing the basics well and we weren’t taking the game on. We got a little bit stagnant, we got a little bit unpredictable to each other so I put it on the midfield group to straighten us up, get some deeper entries and put some pressure on. The quarter didn’t start as we liked but I thought the players kept at the task really well and the result looked after itself I suppose.

That five-goal run, did you enjoy it?

It was good, I enjoyed what we were doing around the ball and I enjoyed our method because that’s more of the footy we want to play. I just felt the middle two quarters drifted away from that.

You were obviously pretty undermanned against a strong team today, how much significance do you attach to the result?

No significance really because it’s a practice match and there’s no four points on the line but I thought we learnt some lessons about the way we want to play, when we got it right, we looked really good. I thought our first quarter was solid, we jumped into the game really well. I thought our mids hunted the ball and hunted the man the way we were after. Take away that goal on the siren and we kept them to two goals with a pretty strong breeze. I also liked the way we finished the game, it all starts with our method around the ball and we got that right more often than not in the last quarter as well.

How much do you think the guys will take confidence from that last quarter just to know it is with them and they can do it?

It’s not really the last quarter, hopefully they take a lot of confidence from the whole pre-season. Last week I thought their attitude towards our whole pre-season so today’s just a bi-product of that really.

I guess you guys have surprised a lot of people given the amount of talent that’s out and you’ve still been able to produce two good performances, what have you seen from the group in terms of spirit, skill and things like that?

One thing we haven’t spoken about is what we can’t do and who we’re missing, all we’ve spoken about is what we can do and who we’ve got in the team. We’ve tried to put them in roles that allowed them to play to their strengths and they’ve done that. I thought we had too few contributors in that second and third quarter, in the last quarter when everyone plays their role and brings intensity both sides of the ball, you get an outcome like that.

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How is Stephen Hill?

He’s a little bit sore, he felt some awareness in his quad and the position we’re in it’s no risk so we decided to take him out of the game at three-quarter time.

How much confidence will Logue take from that game?

It’s a bit like our team, he can take a lot of confidence from his whole pre-season because there hasn’t been a day that he hasn’t rocked up to work trying to get better and today was the end product and the result of that so he’s ready for the challenge. He’ll confront different challenges, he’ll have his ups and downs through his career but his attitude can’t change to what it is now.

How are you feeling about your round one selection?

There are still some decisions we need to make. I thought (Connor) Blakey and (Brandon) Matera went back to Peel and got some good minutes and executed their roles well. (James) Aish and (Luke) Ryan should be good to go for round one. We feel like although missing a lot, we have some good selection headaches to have and that has been our mandate over this whole pre-season, is to make sure we develop our players to be AFL ready. We’ll keep working towards that and keep making sure we’ve got a deep list and we’re not where we want to be yet, so having said that I feel like we’ve got a number of players available, ready and in good form for round one, so there’s going to be a few disappointed players.

What did you make of McCarthy’s performance on the wing?

I thought he was really good, he’s trained there all pre-season and we didn’t give him much of a run there last week and in our last intra club as we had to play him as a taller forward. He probably hasn’t had the game time over the last couple of weeks to get himself ready for today but I thought his first and second quarters were really good. I thought he dropped away a little bit in the third quarter and it wasn’t based on his positioning or his work rate but more of not doing the basics quite well enough but I thought he rebounded really well in the fourth quarter and he was a real contributor for us in the last quarter and that shows he has a lot of guts and ability to get back on task for him to turn his game around and be a contributor in the last quarter, so I was really happy with him.

What was going through your mind when Darcy went down in the third quarter?

It didn’t please me to see him rolling around on the ground with a sore ankle but I was really proud of the way he rebounded from it and obviously he went away and got some treatment and came back and competed really well and him doing his job in the ruck allows Rory Lobb and Matt Taberner to go about their business up forward and that just structures us up really well. I was really proud of his efforts today.

Just on the two you left out Matera and Blakely to not make the 26-man squad was that a strong message?

I don’t think we can read it like that. Their priorities this week was to get game time into them because there is a chance when you play an extended bench that game time can be low for a couple of guys. Caleb Serong didn’t have a lot of game time today but that’s where he is at in his career. Blakely and Matera have missed a lot of pre-season and we needed to get minutes into them and the best way we can get minutes into them was giving them a full game with Peel for their preparations, so they are still in contention for round one.

Darcy Tucker coming in off the knee knock how did you view his game?

I thought he was great. He gives us a different dynamic in the midfield, he’s really clean, his speed to get from inside out is really strong and he looked a bit tired at times given his lack of preparation and match practice but I thought he was a strong contributor and he’s only going to get better.