You were probably the better team outside of a 10-minute patch either side of quarter time, does that make it tougher to take?
The game is 60 minutes of footy, so you have to come out here and play four quarters. That lapse in 10 minutes probably hurt us a little bit. We had our opportunities. I thought a number of our players played their role. Tayla Bresland in the backline and Ebony Antonio, when she got moved to the backline was really dangerous for us. There are a lot of positives out of today and I thought we did play some really good footy. We are excited now for Friday, that’s on our home turf at Domain Stadium, and excited for that challenge.
Where do you rank this among the performances overall this season?
It’s one of our better ones. We want to string together four quarters of footy, so we still have a bit of improvement to go. Certainly getting all 22 to weigh in and contribute is what we are looking at doing. It is up there with one of our better games. Statistically, we probably should win the game but I thought Collingwood fought really hard throughout the four quarters and obviously went on to win, and deservingly.
You had a couple of local girls in Tayla Bresland and Kira Phillips playing today. Can you rate their performance?
Tayla Bresland took to Mo Hope and she did really well there. I was really happy with her effort throughout the whole game. Demi Okely and Kira Phillips are both from the Peel Thunderbirds and they certainly took a step up today in their performance. They will continue to grow, and will be great contributors for us next week.
To run out the game as well as you did, does it show the players fitness?
You can’t fault the effort from the girls in that last quarter. Unfortunately for them they couldn’t get the job done, but their effort was fantastic and led by our leadership group and (captain) Kara Donnellan who played really deep. Unfortunately we didn’t get the result in the heat, but it was the same for Collingwood, both teams worked really hard.
How are the girls feeling?
I think they’re devastated, but we know the journey that we’re on. We aren’t about wins and losses at this stage; we’re about building and getting better week-to-week. I’m excited about getting on the track on Monday, showing them some of the vision and reviewing the game. We’ll prepare really well for Friday’s challenge against Carlton. I thought the girls prepared really well for the challenge against Collingwood, and we’ll go again.
It’s not all about wins and losses but how nice would it be to get a win on Friday?
They’ve had exceptional effort for four months and we would love them to get the reward and the opportunity to sing the song. And what better place than the home of WA football at Domain Stadium?
You pressed quite hard in a number of places today. What positives do you take away and what can you work on for the next game?
Our contested possession and tackling is something we wanted to work on going into this game, and there was significant improvement there. But there’s still room to improve and making sure we get everyone weighing in and contributing to the end result. We certainly had a number step up today which was fantastic to see. They’re judged on their actions and not on their words. They’re digging really deep and we’ll impart this moving forward.
