Bassett on Dan Houston:
“Yeah Dan is ready to go, so he’ll be lining up tomorrow night.
“He played with it last week, played well and he’ll play again this week.
“You look at a balance of a side and pick what’s best for the team but he’s done a good job in the midfield in the last couple of weeks.
Bassett on Peter Ladhams:
“He’s been in outstanding form in the SANFL. He’s got great movement and he’s nice and clean below his knees and he’s been very combative for the four quarters each week so we’re pretty excited to pick Pete, he’s certainly been knocking down the door for a while and he’s earned his opportunity.
“You’ve got to earn selection and that’s right across the board, you know, there’d be a good chance you’d think Dougal would come back into the side next week but Peter’s capable of some things that not many people his height are able to do, so hopefully he gets the opportunity to shine tomorrow.
“We haven’t seen a lot of him as a forward this season, he’s played predominant ruck in this SANFL and played probably 90% of each game in the ruck and what he’s able to do is play long periods of time and run a long way.
“He’s certainly got some ability to play as a forward and you know, we’re not exactly sure what we’ll get tomorrow but I’m reasonably confident that he’ll give us a consistent contest and he’ll work hard back to goals and then he can put on some pressure and also win some ball and potentially score some goals.
Bassett on Ebert’s return to AFL:
“I think Brad Ebert was important back in the side last week and what he can hopefully build again this week so he can be more of that marking target, as well as his run and ability to win the ground ball has been very good.”
Bassett on maintaining consistency:
“The training standards of the players during the week has been very good in working on their game, you know we’re building towards consistency, you know we probably haven’t shown it for a little while which isn’t unusual in the AFL, it’s a tough competition, you’ve got to be at your best each and every week if you want to win more of your games than you lose.
“It’s a good challenge for us tomorrow, to bring the same effort and intensity that we brought last week.”
Bassett on the win over Geelong:
“It certainly gives us some belief that our best is good enough to challenge the best teams in the competition but you know we need to do it week in week out.
If we see it three or four weeks in a row then we’ll start to believe that’s who we are.”
Bassett on the Western Bulldogs:
“Certainly their run out of back half has been very good, they’ve got a lot of score from their back half, they’ve got an outstanding inside midfielder in (Marcus) Bontempelli, who gives them first use in a very good clearance team.
“They’ve played some good footy of late; they pushed Collingwood, who are a very good side, last week, so we expect a strong game.
“Yeah (Caleb Daniel) is a very good player, I think we tagged (Jason) Johannisen last year with Darcy Byrne Jones and he did a good job on him so he’s certainly someone we keep an eye on but we’re confident in what we do as a forward line.
“It’s always an interesting balance when you’re managing tags and you’re going okay if we tag this player how much do we reduce his impact and how much do we reduce the impact of the player that’s tagging him so we’ll have those discussions during the week and we’ll see what happens tomorrow night.”
