The second quarter seemed to be pretty decisive in the contest, is that how you saw it as well?
To be honest, I reckon it happened a little bit earlier than that. We dodged a few bullets with their inaccuracy towards goal. It was probably half-way through the first (quarter), they got on top in the contest. The contest was poor by us, but we lacked method as well which allowed them to get on the outside and once they got on the outside, the way they moved the ball was as good as anyone I believe, so we got exposed.
The clearances in the second quarter in particular, I think they doubled you and took you 15-16 minutes to get the ball inside 50.
We got dominated in the contest all over the ground, including stoppage, and centre bounce was horrible early in the second quarter. That led to them holding field position and they defended their front half really well. Our ball security and the ability to find anyone loose was non-existent so we got dominated.
What do you put the dominance out of the middle to?
A bit of it is executing the basics, and I thought their systems and structures held up especially at centre bounce, they always seemed to be able to find a loose. That’s a little bit of the method stuff I was talking about. We’d lose the contest, then we’d collapse in, so we’d have two or three going at the ball carrier and then they’d find the loose and come out the front. That wasn’t just the centre bounce, it happened all over the ground. It’s disappointing and we’ve got to get back to our contest and contest method.
Did the losses of (Alex) Pearce and (Joel) Hamling look quite glaring today? Do you reach a critical mass at some stage with personnel?
Yes, especially when we don’t defend the way we want to defend, and they get out the front of stoppage and centre bounce. I don’t believe that many players could have defended (Harry) McKay the way the ball was coming in today. Not having Hamling and Pearce limits your options, there was literally no one else that we could put on him to try and give ‘Coxy’ (Brennan Cox) a chop out. We ended up going to a plus one which we thought helped a little bit, but the rest of the team hung Coxy out to dry really, with the way the ball was getting delivered in there.
Do you have an update on the three guys that went off? Luke Ryan, Lachie Schultz and Hayden Young?
Hayden Young did his hammy, and Lachie Schultz looks like he’s got concussion. Luke Ryan should be fine, he had a bit of calf tightness before the game and got through it ok.
Do you get anyone back? Nat Fyfe is probably the one we are all thinking of.
‘Fyfey’ (Nat Fyfe) will come back if he passes all of the protocols. Like I’ve said all week, it looks really promising. We’re going to have to fill a couple of other spots as well. We’ve got to look at our form as well, we can’t be a team that goes up and down. We want to be consistent. That’s not just about winning and losing, that’s about application to role, application to the contest. We can’t be a team that goes up and down in that. We need to be consistent and we need to put a consistent brand out there, which we haven’t for the first three weeks of the year. We need to look at personnel all over the ground, but we are limited with who we can bring in so we’ll have to weigh that up at match committee.
It looked like they physically targeted Andrew Brayshaw, how do you think he responded to that?
I said to the players at half time that it’s not acceptable to allow that to happen and we can’t be a team that hangs our teammates out to dry. I thought by the end of the second quarter that it wasn’t just Andy, they were being more physical to us all over the ground. I thought we stepped up to the mark there, I thought there was a lot more physical efforts by our players in the second half, but we can’t allow teams to do that to us. We need to take that lesson out of the game because it’s not good enough.
Were you fairly strong at half time on that?
Yes, when a team is getting dominated like we were, it’s okay to rip into them but you need to give them hope as well and you need to give them some process to go forward with. So, we’ll try and strike a balance but there were a few harsher words spoken I suppose.
Every time you got the ball forward in the second half it seemed to go to Liam Jones, the delivery probably wasn’t the best.
Yes, that’s just understanding the game. We were under the pump a lot of the time going inside 50 and we rush kicked in there when our forwards weren’t re-equalising and it made it hard to defend our front half. We need to educate our players on state of game more and getting them to understand state of game and being able to shift. If you somehow get an inside 50 and you can go deep inside 50 and with a lot of numbers in there, you can lock the ball in and play the game in your front half. But we were just rushing kicks inside 50, kicking straight to them and it was bouncing straight out. That’s understanding state of game more than anything so we need to take those lessons because once we’re down on the scoreboard we can’t right the ship. We’ve got a lot to work on.
Last year you were on the road for long chunks, and this year it’s back to a weekly travel schedule, do you think the guys are struggling with that a little bit?
It’s a new challenge for us absolutely, we’ve got a lot of fresh faces that haven’t played at the MCG, haven’t played at Marvel before or haven’t been here for a while so it all plays into it, but we can’t use that as an excuse. We’ve got to be more consistent so I’m not going to give our players that out.
How do you go about bridging the gap between a performance like last week and today?
We just need to review it like we did last week and take the lessons and move on. Largely it’s going to come down to the contest. Last week we were good in the contest, our contest method was there and this week it fell apart for whatever reason. We need to dig deeper on that and understand why players weren’t as good in the contest as they were last week and rectify it pretty quickly.
How do you think Andy (Brayshaw) responded to the physical targeting?
He never gave up and he never gives up. He probably didn’t have as good a game as his first two games, but he kept trying. It can’t be just one person all the time either to win the ball, all of our mids got beaten today. He puts his head in the hole so he got some physical attention but we got beaten as a midfield group as well so we’ll review it, get better and move on.
Did you think some of the attention was untoward from Carlton?
I didn’t think so no, they just had control of the game and that controlled us a bit.
