He is progressing really well. We expect him to train on Thursday and be up for selection.
His first All Australian must have been a proud moment?
Yeah, was it his first? We acknowledged it with the group. A good effort. We got him to thank his teammates because they were pretty responsible to help him get that achievement. It is good for the club. It is nice to have an All Australian. A young club, young history and it helps. You have got to start building it somewhere.
There were a few comments that a few more Freo players should have made the team?
I saw the team come out. You saw their midfield. Three Swans. I think it was Jarrad McVeigh, Kieran Jack and Daniel Hannebery. They are exceptional players, then you see Joel Selwood and Scott Pendlebury. It is feedback for our guys that they need to get better and be more consistent. You could pick three All-Australian teams to be frank. It is not a focus for me at the minute. I think we all have an interest in it and acknowledge those guys. It is well deserved. But you could pick two other All-Australian teams that could match up pretty well on the one that is picked. It is sort of yesterday’s news now.
Is it a compliment that says your team is even?
Yeah. I think you could interpret it as that. It is an opinion business. We are a very even team. Weight of numbers, getting weight of numbers and we are going to need a weight of numbers performance on the weekend to get the job done.
Are they a bit undermanned compared to when you played them before?
Ben McGlynn has played, he has missed one week. LRT (Lewis Roberts-Thomson) is a dual premiership player. I know him really well, he is an incredible athlete and a great competitor. They were written off last week. They were tired and undermanned but all I saw was the reigning premier deliver a powerful performance and they are coming to a ground that they know really well and they like playing at. It is going to be won and lost in the midfield. It is where their strength lies. They had three All Australians last night. They have got a great ruck combination that matches up well against ours. It is going to be a fierce challenge. We are going to need to play to the end, play to the last minute and go to the wire. It is going to be a tough hard contest. They have shown, as we have, a great ability to adapt and improvise. Prelims are incredibly hard to win. Talk is cheap. Everyone will have their own opinion. We are fresh, they are tired, this is our strength, this is theirs. The only thing that is going to get it done is action over and over and over again until we get the result we are looking for. There is nothing new for us, we just need to do what we have been doing. That is the great challenge for us.
Their three All Australians are in the midfield, is that where their strength lies?
Yeah well I often say, and not everyone agrees with it, that it's won and lost in the midfield.
You protect your defence and give your forwards supply. I don't think they've got too many injuries through the midfield. In actual fact, I think they've got none. So it's an incredibly big challenge. One we’re excited about and one we're looking forward to, but it's going to be a big challenge.
You sent Crowley to Hannebery last time?
I think he kicked a few goals on him. I'm not sure possession wise how much he got. We haven't had match committee yet. We'll do that later in the week. We are having a good look at them. We've got plenty of time to look at them. Sometimes it can be a pain because you can watch too much vision.
Certainly Craig Bird will do a run-with role. Ryan O'Keefe will do a run-with, work-off. Then you've got the attacking Jack and McVeigh. They can put him back, put him forward. They've got some exceptional players. If we just focus on one or two, the rest will get us. Parker's a unique young talent. We are under no illusions it's going to be a big battle in there.
With no Tippett there, how does that change?
I think they've found a way to score. Their midfielder's are high goal kickers. McGlynn has kicked a lot. Mike Pyke has kicked a lot. They're like us. Most teams look for a spread of goal kickers. But it's going to be about contested ball and pressuring them and creating turnovers.
Do you feel like you know Longmire's coaching style well?
I know he's a really good person. Got greatintegrity. But I don't really know his style except what he produces on the field. They're the reigning premiers. I don't think we can escape that. They won a lot of games. It's not about the coaches. We're just part of the team. We just help navigate and guide. But it really is about the players and the coaching panels and preparation. Once the ball is bounced, it's all about the players really.
Will you train at Subiaco?
We have an option to get on there. Look, it was adverse weather. We had to shift training on Saturday. I thought I was back in Melbourne. Woke up with the rain last night, so we certainly got in early to look. But the ground's in really good condition. So we plan to train there. We have both booked and we'll make a decision later in the week. But we like getting up to Subi and having a session. It's a great ground.
Have you spoken to the players about prelim week?
We've spoken about it. There's a lot more media representation, the focus narrows, and there's a lot more external distraction and the outcome is bigger. We acknowledge that but we welcome it because at the end of the day we're aiming as a club to go to Grand Final day. So it's an opportunity to practice and rehearse and cope with all the distractions and challenges and mounting focus. So we see that as an opportunity to be used to our advantage and grow. We're about improvement and growth and that's our whole aim, so we welcome it.
Are there nerves?
That's the whole point. We acknowledge nerves are normal. I've had nerves. But when I feel a little bit nervous what settles me down is drilling into Sydney, preparing really well, then I can relax. That's the whole focus for us. When you're a little bit nervous, focus on what you need to do to control the situation, which is preparation. By definition you can't control the future. That's when you can get a bit anxious because you can't control it. What you can control is stay in the present, stay in the now and focus on preparation.
Has what you learnt at St Kilda helped your preparations?
To be frank, how we're preparing for this week is how we prepared for round one. We're not looking for anything new. We just want to stay focused and not get distracted. Our preparation is identical round one to now. There's no magic there. Finals aren't magical experiences. They're about hard work and action and preparation.
Garrick Ibbotson?
No chance.
Nick Suban?
He's fine, he trained fully on Saturday.
Is round eight too far back for your prep for Sydney?
Most of us have strong signatures of how we play. So we'll have a look at it. Their last four weeks are a really good guide. We've learnt some lessons from the last two times we've played them. We've had lots of entries, a lot more entries, but have struggled to score a little bit. So we'll have to look at our ball use and how we went about scoring, and who got away from us really. But there's lots of personnel changes. There's eight or nine differences on both sides.
There’s a lot of fan support out there today for training.
It's great, as a club the members are the lifeline of the club, we exist. Clearly they're enthusiastic, it's a bit of history, first home preliminary and we're pretty keen to make it count. So it's great for the players and it's good acknowledgement for them and highlights our fans passion and our member’s passion. We welcome it, we'll have a closed session later in the week so it's a good opportunity for the guys to get here and enjoy seeing our players train.
You spoke about the history of the club recently. Are you aware of just how important this is to a lot of the fans?
It's no more important to them than it is to me. We're just keen to get out there and put a good show on. I think what gets lost is I think the early days were hard but the last three years the clubs been really strong financially, great corporate backing with Woodside and Decmil and Programmed and a great executive and management. It's not one person, it's not one player it's about the whole club and we're a serious football club that’s highly accountable and aims to win. The fact that we’re in the preliminary final means we’re making in-roads but we're really keen to try and capitalise. It’s one of the hardest games to win obviously.
Is it a challenge having no game last week and training on the weekend?
It's a challenge, I think there's a lot of positives, there's some potential negatives but the science of it, we know we worked hard without cooking them too much but it’s about the brain from here. If anyone think's we're getting any fitter, we're kidding ourselves. It's about staying active enough and when the ball is bounced, bodies will be flying and we're going to run and spread in the manner that we know Sydney will run and spread. They've been there before. Jarrad McVeigh's lead them to a premiership, he's lead them through prelims so if we back off for one minute in the game on the weekend, Jarrad McVeigh and the Swans, they'll come over the top of us, so were setting ourselves to go right to the end, for Matthew (Pavlich) to be unrelenting and our leadership group to be unrelenting and not back off and go to the wire. That's what its about.
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