Justin should you be on the Gold Coast at the moment, is it necessary to be away from home at the moment?
You can't really make judgement on these things in hindsight, you have to judge them in the moment and that's what the AFL did and we obliged and we're up here so that's our fate at the moment, it is what it is.
Did anyone ask for it to be reviewed and revisited?
No, because once we're up here it's just too hard to travel twice with two away games in a row across the country it makes the second game difficult to win. Once we were up here we just decided to stay and cop our lot. The Brisbane game is a little bit different because it's a fixture swap and we get that home game back later in the year so it will even out across the season.
Are you pleased that you were able to get within four goals of Brisbane and come home or do you get really frustrated that you let the game slip in the first place?
It's probably frustration because we had a few plans going into the game and we didn't feel like we executed them really well, especially in that second quarter when we let it slip. The start of the third quarter was pretty ordinary as well. I was pretty happy with the way the players connected and stayed together and fought it out to the end but we've got to be better at the start, we can't be giving away a three-goal head start in the first quarter, on the road to a good team. Plenty to review and plenty to learn from.
What were some of the plans that you went in with that didn't work?
First and foremost our basics and the fundamentals of our game weren't good enough in the first half and they were much better at that. I think the simple thing is we played a little bit too straight which played into their defender's hands. They've got some really strong key posts down there and some really good ground level players and we just played a little bit too straight. I thought in the second half we were a bit braver with the footy and we were able to change angles and that led to us marking the ball a bit more in our front half. That's something we wanted to do all game but we just couldn't buffer their pressure and do the basics well enough to expose that in the first half.
When do you sit the players down and discuss the challenges in front of you?
We've gone through the last couple of weeks where we haven't played our best footy. Sometimes you feel like there are so many aspects of your game that aren't working for you and the players can only consume so much information, so as a coach it's your job to make sure you give them bite-sized bits that they can take away and implement and hopefully get a better result. It's constantly going through your head what you need to feed the players and what they can work on.
Have you spoken to Nat Fyfe about his goal kicking? Or do you just leave him to have his own demons?
We have conversations about it and it's more just me asking what's going through his mind because when you're a player of Nat's calibre and status, there's a lot of people that want to give you advice and I'm sure it's coming from every direction at him. My advice to him is just to make sure that he's really clear on his process. I actually said to him the other day that his field kicking is actually really good, his kick rating is through the roof and he's really worked on that side of his game. I'm pretty sure it will translate to goal kicking in the near future, we just have to get a few away first and get the confidence up.
Is he finding that difficult?
Yes absolutely. The fact that we're talking about it now, it puts pressure on him every time he gets the ball in front of the big sticks. A lot of my communication to him is that the majority of his game is going really well. He's leading us really well on and off the field, he's dominating aspects of his game and this is just one little aspect he's got to get right and it will just round him off really well. I know he's doing the work and I know it will click at some stage.
Has the move from deliberate out of bounds to insufficient intent been good for the game or a source of constant frustration?
There's some aspects which are just wrong calls, and i'd like the AFL to put them out there that they're just wrong calls because it does put grey in some of these areas. We're just after consistency and that's what our players are after as well.
How diligent are you in trying to coach a technique in which players don't lead with their head?
It's all about protecting the head, we've got to look after that. We talk about technique, getting in low, hard and side-on. I've got no issues with what Joel Selwood did (against Richmond's Rhyan Mansell) on the weekend and that's the way we would coach our players to do it as well.
Justin could you see that you had a 19th man on the field as the game was going to start?
No, I didn't pick it up to be honest, I must've been looking at the other end. I spoke to Nathan Wilson about it, clearly, he didn't look at the matchup board as we went out to play. He usually starts on the field in fairness to him and this week we didn't start him on the field because of matchups so he got the message real late and thank god he got it before they bounced it.
