Power coach Mark Williams said he was disappointed with the club’s round three result and the team’s inability to capitalise on opportunities created. Having said that, he said he took heart from some of the key indicators and that it would be back to hard work this week in preparation for the round four clash against Collingwood. To follow is a full transcript of his post-game media conference.
We’re very disappointed with the outcome of today. Obviously we had a fair bit of the ball. If you look at the way that we turned over the ball so many times. I thought Adelaide played very smart. I thought they got the most out of their opportunities. Obviously we didn’t put any scoreboard pressure on them at all. Towards the end of the third quarter, I thought we were back in the game with a chance but I didn’t think we took the opportunities early in the last quarter. I think we had the first two scoring shots and they took it from the kick out and kicked a goal from the boundary line.
Those things happen. If you look at the scheme of where we were last year, they finished on top and we were 12th, and it was always going to be a big hill for us to climb.We’re on the way but we’re certainly not there yet. We’re two and one like Adelaide and are preparing to play Collingwood and we’ll want to play better than that next week.It was a great experience for some of the young blokes who hadn’t played before in that sort of game.Mark, why weren’t you able to create space inside your forward line.When we went inside 50, they probably had nine players in there, which meant that we were kicking from a fair way out or we were under a lot of pressure trying to make decisions going inside 50. We appreciated what they were going to do but they did it better than our plans to counteract them.Is that what makes it frustrating in a way that you identified what they were going to do but…They’ve (Adelaide) done it (flooding) before to us. They tried to do it in Round 21 last year but we were a little bit better (at counteracting it) then and we need to continue to work on it and be better. We need to do it better. We won the clearances which is terrific. To go inside 50 more than them is fantastic but we need to be more productive than what we were today. I think we dropped five marks inside 50 that, given the circumstances of where Adelaide are giving you the opportunities, you have to take those chances and even our snaps on goals were ordinary compared to what they have been.Were you happy with the pressure that your players placed in their forward line? We were trying to win the game by playing players up the ground and if we got a turnover there, they were back there by themselves. I think the crowd appreciated we were trying to win the game rather than sit back inside their (Crows) forward 50. Were you content though with the defence when at times the latitude between your defender and their forward seemed very very big gap. Some of the times you have to look at the leading patterns of their forwards, it’s not simple and straight up. They work very hard on trying to put some distance between the defender and the forward and they did OK. We weren’t as good as we could be. Mark, Warren Tredrea’s first game back for some time, how did you see that today? He probably did better than I thought he would. That’s a fact. It was good to get it (first game back) out of the way and he’ll build from there and get some confidence from playing AFL footy under that sort of pressure. Playing on an All-Australian for most of the time was a good contetst for him.Do you have a better idea after today of what the squad needs or where you can develop them further? You don’t want to throw it all out. You get disappointed that, gee, it’s not as good as you might hope, so it was a bit of a reality check and a kick in the bum. We’ve been pretty good for a couple of months now and we did everything we could to freshen our players up, so this week we need to get back to some hard work.What do you do goalkicking-wise, is it a simple fact about positioning? If you look at the stats for goalkicking I think our set shots were pretty good. Our on the run, I think was one goal five (behinds) and then snapshots were three points, so that’s one goal eight (behinds). You have to take those chances. Some of them you have to look at where they were kicked from. I think again if you want to look at the stats, you will see that Adelaide had as many shots from deep and wide and long as we did and they got about the same return from those shots. But on the run closer and snapshots stand out as the things that cost us and the Crows marked the ball inside 50 and we certainly didn’t. If you don’t get Brogan for a couple of weeks, what are your options? We’ve got Fabian Deluca and Jonathon Giles. Thankfully Jonathon Giles played NAB Cup for us and that’s exactly what that NAB Cup is for.Would you re-think Toby Thurstans or are you committed to keeping him in defence?No, he was probably a bit sore today, so we won’t judge him too harshly on that, but he’s played particularly well for us.Peter Burgoyne appeared pretty sore today, I know he had that problem last year, is he OK? I mean, he obviously played OK, but how’s he going fitness-wise? Yeah, you’re right. It surprised me. It looked like he’d been short half way through the first quarter. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. But he assured us he was OK so we’ll just monitor him and see how he is. Obviously we’re not trying to push him any quicker than he can go, but as you say he still got a lot of the ball, but he was nowhere near as explosive as he was last week.What did you think of the holding the ball rule today? It’s just another variation on the theme.Mark, what about not having Danyle Pearce and the impact of that? Danyle does run and carry the ball and make some really good decisions, so that’s disappointing but I wouldn’t want to stack up the players we had out to who they had out. Warren came away from the goals a fair bit…but he seemed to cramp Ebert’s space. How do you get a couple of leading forwards working at the same time? I didn’t particularly notice that. I thought that Bassett played really well. I thought that Ebo dropped the ball a couple of times when he should have caught it and missed a shot early. But be fair with him, he’s been outstanding for a long time, he’s playing on a real champion backman who knows the game well, and as I said they played extra numbers in defence and they were particularly good at the way that they did it. Mark, you’ve emphasised pace. Do games like today show the vast difference between having pace and using pace? There’s only a few times in games like that where you can actually use it, and certainly at stoppages you can, because they’re not sitting back in the holes all the time. Otherwise first class decision makers are the best things you can use.
