That’s probably the worst loss I’ve ever been associated with at the club. I can’t ever remember a team outscoring us by 53 points in the last quarter of a game, especially given the fact that we’d played terrific football for three quarters.
I feel completely devastated for our supporters, they’ve come here with a lot of hope in their hearts and to finish up like that was just a disaster for everyone. No-one walks away from it. We spoke for a fair time after the game, we’ll have to play four quarters obviously.
From Brisbane’s point of view, they did a terrific job to keep at it with the tide so far against them. Their guns in the last quarter, if you look at the stats of whose kicking goals and whose getting the ball in the last quarter, they stood up and ran all over us, so all credit to them.
People will analyse whatever they like, but I looked at the half-time stats and if you were to pick hard ball gets, we were up by 5 or 6 goals but we were miles down in those, so you can look at the end of the game and say what they were but we were winning the game by a long way at half-time with those stats going that way. I think stoppages might have been 14-2 (to Brisbane) in the last quarter, we had our best players around the ball, but that was certainly against the feel of the whole night.
For a team to get up off the canvass like they did is outstanding but the odds would say it doesn’t happen too often, and it certainly leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Three quarters has been great, but we don’t take anything out of that. You just can’t lose like that. It started to pour with rain, for a lot of the time obviously we kept Bradshaw and Brown quiet, a lot of the time we had spare players in front of them. In the last quarter we had one, then two, and we still couldn’t stop them. Not happy.
Was it just the stoppages that went wrong, what else went wrong in the last quarter?
Stoppages is the most significant thing that changed up from where it was for the whole game.
What did you say to the players in the rooms after the game?
We mainly talked about the responsibility we have to our club. The facts are we are all just passing through the club. We have to respect what the club has set up so far and what they look forward to in the future, and we certainly didn’t make anyone too proud tonight.
Does it come down to mental attitude in the last quarter or did the Showdown take more out of the team than we thought, out of their legs?
You’ve (the journalist) been associated with a lot of footy over time and certainly I have, I just don’t see that (a 9-goal turnaround in the last quarter) ever happen. Then you look for all the reasons in the world, but we’re not blaming anything except ourselves.
During the week you talked about it being a long season to go, do you still feel that way. Is the pressure on you?
You can ask the same questions every week. Is the pressure on you? It’s always on you. I mean is it on you more now? Does the pressure really build on you more now?
The more you lose, the more it is, so yes, I can understand that. Having been in the 0-3 position, at three-quarter time you’d say, ‘gee, they managed that and handled that very very well’, and things were going very well. All the signs that I could see last week, through the training and through the attitudes around the club pointed in the right direct, and where we were at three-quarter time was about what I expected. I certainly couldn’t see what was coming up next.
You’ve shown great faith in the players with unchanged line-ups, do you make changes now?
I would imagine so, but I can say that, but for instance, maybe someone’s got injured in the SANFL that I don’t even know about yet, so it’s a bit hard to tell you exactly (who).
In the first two and half quarters there was almost constant handball through the centre, is it fair to say it was just a matter of time before it caught up with you or Brisbane became aware where the 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th handball would end up?
We probably overused the handball a bit, but when you’re up by six or seven goals you’re thinking it’s going okay. The better teams are doing it, if you watch the Western Bulldogs who are at the top, they do it as much as any team that you ever see. I can guarantee you when it was pouring at three-quarter time we talked about not handballing at all.
Up until that point were you happy with the balance between kicking and handball?
I’m not sure, what were the numbers do you know? No? I know we had more handballs than Brisbane but we were up by six or seven goals, so you’d think things were not too bad. But you might argue that we could have been up by 11 if we didn’t overuse the handball? As I keep saying, we want to encourage players to run, to be creative out there on the field, they have to make their decisions. If you were in the box you would have heard there were quite a few times where we thought we overused it, and quite a few times where we sent out messages in those positions to kick the ball, but players play the game. We can give them the advice, but they play the game.
Where do you go from here? How do you turn it around?
It will be a mighty effort. We’re certainly up against it now. Our resolve will certainly be tested, but I think we lost four games in a row last year as well.
So will you look to that to try and gain something out of that?
No, you just asked me, so I just plucked something out of the sky. Without any doubt the mood of the coaching group and how we represent what’s going on and how we prepare for next week will assist, but the players certainly have to come with an attitude that ‘we can get out of this’ and I’m confident we can.
You talked about clearances, is it the centre of the ground that you look at turning around this week?
We dominated the centre square clearances, but lost the back and forward clearances, so we have to work on those things.
Was one positive Alipate Carlile’s performance on Jonathan Brown for the first three quarters?
I can’t think of too many positives (right now). It probably was, yes, the glass is half full in that regard. For me Steven Salopek made some really solid courageous commitment contributions to two or three passages of play that really stopped the opposition and I thought that was a real big step in his development. They stand out for me.
At the end of the grand final there was widespread opinion that the way you lost may affect the club mentally. Do you still maintain that it has not had any affect on the club?
Yes. None at all. It has nothing to do with it. If you look at Geelong’s season so far, they’ve belted all the teams they’ve played. We were very competitive (in Round 1), we improved by 110 points against them. We were pretty competitive last week, I think most people agree we had opportunities to at least draw the game, given different circumstances. I can’t see how you’d draw that. You can pluck it if you want to, it sounds good, but I don’t see it.
