It was a different kind of win to round 1 – are you pleased with the result?
It's always pleasing to get the four points. That's the starting point really. That was the objective when we came here and we did that.
It was interesting weather, it hasn't rained for 100 days… our fans and members will come in anything, and they were really passionate and loud. But in a perfect world, it would be nice and dry and crisp for them. It was the Starlight game, we were raising money for kids that are seriously ill.?

At the end of the day, the players worked until we cracked them open. I thought we cracked them wide open in the end. We dominated the game, and with a bit more accurate kicking it would have been even more emphatic.

A tardy start, a little bit of ill discipline, A little bit of some frees.?But in the end 61 entries - it was a really solid performance and guys stood up when they needed to.

Your midfielders seem to be natural wet weather players?
I don't take it for granted. They like the wet. But they work incredibly hard. I often say it's won and lost in the midfield, and I think our midfield stood up today. It started with Aaron (Sandilands) and then (Nat) Fyfe, (David) Mundy, (Stephen) Hill and (Ryan) Crowley was super on (Gary) Ablett.

Everyone rolled through there – (Matt) de Boer, (Danyle) Pearce, (Tendai) Mzungu, (Tommy) Sheridan, (Michael) Walters went through there. It was a really positive collective.

We were challenged today, we accepted the challenge. We come away healthy. Hayden (Ballantyne) copped a knock but he had the (concussion) test and he was cleared. Nathan (Fyfe) copped a really big front-on hit that I was really concerned about as he was going for a marking contest. But he got up. It was quite brutal the way he went about it, so it was quite pleasing.

What is your assessment of Aaron Sandilands’ influence on the match?
I think it's self evident he gave us first use. They're an elite, talent-packed midfield. But we rate our midfield. Our first possession was strong, but you double handball and you slip and you get stripped. Sometimes it's harder to capitalise and it's easier to make it a dogfight in there. You're not going to waltz out clean too many times.

But I thought we had some terrific centre square bounce clearances. Mark Stone and Brett Kirk work really hard on those clearance things. In the end it was a solid performance.

You lost the clearances… is that stat misleading??
Ultimately it's about entries and score. I think Geelong lose a lot of clearance numbers but they counter punch. And when they do clear it, they tend to score, and Hawthorn are the same. Their clearance numbers can be a little bit down, but their scores for and against and entries are really strong. So it can be a bit deceiving, no doubt.

Are you getting more out of Sandilands than you bargained for?
Well I don't really bargain for anything. He's playing pretty good footy. But one swallow doesn't make a summer. It's round two, there's plenty of hurdles to jump and plenty of work to be done. Nothing has been achieved yet. Aaron's just an important part of the team. Australian rules is a unique game. The ground is 172m long. I don't see one player dominate the field. You need to be a complimentary team. You need everyone participating and one player can't get it done. In saying that he's an important cog though.

How happy were you with the defence? Two goals in three quarters?
It didn't feel like that. I thought probably in the second quarter they finished it off pretty strong. I thought we fiddled with the ball in the conditions and struggled to adapt. We sent a really strong message at half-time. The coach wasn't pleased. I thought we got a bit more direct and stopped finessing the ball and just kicked it and surged a bit more. Which, unless you play in these conditions a lot you can lose that art. Coming off I didn't realise they'd only kicked five goals. They're a young emerging team. They're growing. At the end of the day they threw out the challenge and we accepted it, so it's pretty simple.

Does your preparation change for next week due to the rain today?
It's a really good point. It's a short week anyway. The Hawks, Friday night (they) have got a day on us. But that happens a fair bit in league football. We're not that fussed. I think we've got five of them in the first ten weeks or so, so that's solid. I hand them over to our conditioning coach, sports scientist, whatever label you want to give it. But Jason Weber and his team are fantastic so we won’t do a lot this week. We'll have one decent session. Up until then we'll just move them around and free them up. Touch wood, on the surface we're healthy. But they got banged around a bit. But it's not like the mud of the old days is it… it was a bit slippery. It was quite treacherous, slippery. I thought it dried out a bit in the second half.

Reviewing the last game against Hawthorn, does it change the emotion since it was a Grand Final?
There's no emotion for us. It's done and dusted. I don't live in the past. They've got a nice shiny cup and we haven't got much. We've moved on. If you get stuck on the past with anything in life, let alone footy, you can lose your way pretty quickly. So we're focussed on the road ahead not the road behind.

We acknowledge they're still the benchmark of the competition. They're 2-0 after an enormous fighting win. Their will to win, they found a way to win.

We're coming up against a formidable opponent on their home dunghill and we're keen to measure ourselves and try and improve. Because they are the model for sustained excellence. They're out there and we're all chasing them.           

Is it pleasing you have won your first two games with Matthew Pavlich and Chris Mayne only scoring one goal between them?
Yeah, look I couldn't tell you the figures. It's good we got a spread of goal kickers. I couldn't tell you how many we've had today… I can, it's nine.

I think ‘Pav’, difficult day; they get back on ya. He should have kicked five in round one to be frank. Chris Mayne, his role… we could get him to kick more goals, but he does other things for us that we really value.

The time will come when we put him in a goal scoring position a bit more and I think he'll kick a few. But I think at this point, we're aware of it, but it's not a major concern.

Was the decision to leave Clarke out about sending a message or was it penance for the way he got hurt?
No, there was no message. There was no message in it. Jack Hannath performed incredibly well round 1 and he earned the spot. It's a dog eat dog environment. When you get the spot and we espouse what we want and you deliver on that, there's no way in the world that I could have not played Jack Hannath because there would have been an uproar in our club, within our player group.

So, there's no penance… he's been super in his rehab; we're all human, we all make mistakes. He's a great person Zac. We need him playing and he played one game last week and not too many get picked off one game. He needs to go ahead. We know that if someone falls over that he can play.

Is that hard (for Zac) this weekend with no Peel Thunder game?
They'll train tomorrow; so we'll give them a good workout.
Look, he'll know - so I can declare it public because Zac knows - it's ‘Jack's in and I need to get on, so I've got a job.’

So league careers have been made on taking opportunities and missing out on them.

Was (Hayden) Ballantyne cleared of concussion? He didn’t look right in the second half?
That's self-evident because he wouldn't have come back on. I didn't talk to him (in the second half)… I think I did tell him to come up and play.

I thought he was lively. He could have kicked a couple late… he missed a couple of targets.

Look, if you're getting a concussion test, you've been hit pretty hard, so again it's self evident that it's going to be challenging. But he was cleared.
It's a really pressing issue at the moment concussion.

Are you happy with 12.15 (score) in those conditions?
It's what it is. 61 entries, that's pretty healthy. Probably not perfect, but who is?

There will be a big build up to the Hawthorn match on Friday. Is it a good dress rehearsal?
Yeah, I'll buy into it... I'll get the streamers out and we'll pump it up.
For what? We're not in the finals yet. You can't play in the finals until you've earned the right. It's another four points… we're playing the reigning premier.

We get that, generate some great interest… Friday night, marquee game, we're thrilled but we'll prepare in exactly the same manner. We've got a really tough opponent.

I'll leave the hype for everyone else.