How bad is Darcy Tucker’s injury?
It’s definitely a hamstring strain and looks like it’s a bad one at this stage but until you get it scanned and get the scan results back it’s hard for me to comment but he has definitely done something.
And what about Michael Walters?
There’s a concern. We’re hoping it’s cramp and that’s probably the diagnosis at the moment but we’ll see how it pulls up. Scan him and fingers crossed it is (cramp).
What was your assessment of the performance in difficult conditions? It looked like your players tried to over possess rather than take the territory?
Clearly they (Geelong) handled the conditions better. They understand when it’s a good opportunity just to get 40 metres of territory and then on the flipside they understand when they can give that extra handball or look for that short kick and we mixed that up too much. Under pressure, their ability to absorb pressure and pump the ball 40 metres versus under pressure we tried to handball and then the person who would kick it would be under that much pressure it would get smothered and it would lead to another turnover. Clearly in that second quarter we lost all structure forward of the ball. It’s not the way we want to play and if we did win a contest we had nothing to go to because they position so well their backs. We lost all structure forward of the ball. I thought they’d improved and I thought we had a lot of players that were trying, it’s just that they had more players across the field that were harder and tougher for longer.
In a territory game, to concede territory from stoppages hurts, Sean Darcy was 0-6 in free kicks (for – against). How big an issue is that?
It’s clearly an issue. We’ve got a lot of young players at the moment that need to learn from all these experiences and get better and he’s no different. On a night like tonight when no team was going to move the ball from one end of the ground to the other, centre bounce stoppage is critical and it’s something we need to tidy up and him in particular needs to tidy that up.
Were you tempted to bring in Connor Blakely tonight to get the bigger body in?
Like I’ve said plenty of times, Connor’s got to earn his spot by knocking one of the other midfielders out. We feel like we’ve got plenty of midfielders in the team, he just needs to bide his time. He will get his opportunity. Clearly Darcy (Tucker) going down tonight, if Walters happens to be an injury where he misses a week, then his opportunity will come. Clearly another bigger body would have been handy out there tonight. Clearly another mid after Darcy went down in the first five minutes would have been handy as well so we will just have to weigh up the team and see where he fits in next week.
What did you make of Caleb Serong’s game and him playing on Patrick Dangerfield?
We’ve given him some roles throughout the year when opposition inside-clearance players have been getting on top of us and he’s handled them really well. So clearly, we wanted to take Dangerfield out of the game to some degree and put some attention into him. So we threw up Caleb. I know he’s a young man making his way in AFL footy but his body size and his strength isn’t that of a first year player so we were really comfortable with him going into the game on Dangerfield, I thought he limited his impact and found some possessions himself. He’s clearly going to be a good player for us in the future and the more experiences we can give him like this, the better. We have to be able to fast track him, so I was really pleased with his effort.
On Brennan Cox, is that hip injury an ongoing thing?
He’s had it in the past. He had a re-occurrence of that up in the Gold Coast and missed four weeks and he’s come back and had another. We don’t think it’s overly serious, he’s a good chance to play this week, but given that he was a little bit sore during the week we just didn’t want to risk him.
Another pretty strong game from Luke Ryan on Tom Hawkins?
He’s been outstanding, he just keeps fronting up. He’s clearly fighting out of his weight division, but he plays to his strengths. Clearly he didn’t want to wrestle Hawkins tonight and I thought he did a fantastic job. I know Hawkins finished with a couple of goals, but I just couldn’t be prouder of him at the moment, he’s holding us up back there.
What about Tobe Watson who came into the team?
He clearly deserved his opportunity, he’s been emergency for a number of weeks now and I thought he held his own, he had some really good moments. He’s courageous, I thought he handled the conditions reasonably well, so it was a good debut.
Did you have any other injury issues? We saw Blake Acres look pretty sore and Sean Darcy came off for some treatment.
Sean was just a cramp when he came off and I think Acres was just a cork. We’ve got some corks, it was clearly a highly contested game, so we’ve got some sore boys. We’re going to have to get up, we’ve got a six-day break and another good team next week. We’re going to have to recover pretty well and get back on the horse.
Fyfe, Hogan and Sturt, how are they looking?
They’re all a good chance. Fyfe will almost definitely come in, the other two will be touch and go but it’s looking reasonably positive.
Do you expect much banter during the week coming up against your old team?
Not really, it will be good to come up against them. Like I said another good team on the rebound so it will be good to test ourselves again and try and improve on tonight.
Are they (Collingwood) playing a little differently to how they played when you were there do you think?
I don’t think they’re playing much differently. It’s going to be a great challenge.
