We had a great effort from everyone. It was all about giving a bit of yourself for the club today. The club have done a wonderful job and done a lot for ourselves and our players and our staff and we thought that it was time to lay it on the line and deliver and give something back to the club so that was pretty significant for us.
There was some wonderful jobs today. I thought Tredrea did a really important job for us in the forward line. I thought David Rodan played outstanding for the role that he played in opening up some ball for other players, which is something which is new for David. Everyone looks at the number of stats and number of runs but it was really good. I thought Tom Logan and Dom Cassisi and Kane Cornes were really significant. I think Logan did some great stuff in and under. Kane really worked hard, beat his man and got possessions as well. Dom Cassisi, I think he had 13 tackles, he had 8 clearances and won a lot of the ball. That was really important for us.
To beat Adelaide at the contested ball, and continually show we can play that in the past three or four weeks… we beat them at hard ball gets, tackles, clearances, pretty nice stats for us. In a day that was always going to be difficult for scoring I thought everyone contributed, so well done there.
Well done to Danyle. Since getting dropped a few months ago… it’s not like he spat the chewy and gave up, he went back and came back very determined to show he can produce. Every week won’t be like this but he understands that what he had in the first year doesn’t come easy and that’s important for all young players to understand. It’s a really tough game and a lot of scrutiny comes to those that want to stand up and shine out. You have to keep going back and keep improving to stay ahead of the rest. A great effort for him, and more importantly for the entire club.
For all those out there that didn’t quite get there today, we appreciate their continued support and look forward to next week. Any questions?
You got three goals from Pearcey and four each from Motlop and Ebert. How significant were those three?
I thought Mots and Ebo played really hard. It was important to hold the ball in the forward line and I thought they contributed to that. I think we had a few goals caused by holding the ball in. The modern game of footy is not marking the ball and turning around and kicking – that’s kind of run of the mill – the other stuff is the stuff that causes you to win or not.
The Crows came at you in the fourth quarter a couple of times. How pleasing was it to finally stand up to that test?
It was really important for us. Too many times this year, we’ve just rolled over in that regard. Mentally tough is important. There’s so much on the line. They’re going to see these Crows players walking around the street tomorrow and after the game. We’re going to see all the Crows people, and it’s not about gloating, it’s just about walking with your head high and that’s nice.
We saw former Australian cricket coach John Buchanan sitting on the bench in the fourth quarter (and he was in the coach’s box for the rest of the match) and I think he’s even in the room now. Can you enlighten us to the role he might be playing on game day?
Well I’ve never been too good at cricket so I thought I’d get the best in. No, the truth is Peter Rohde and John James thought let’s bring in someone else from outside the group. Obviously he’s a very astute observer of sports people and brought something new to the game that cricket hadn’t seen before. I might have seen him or talked to him once at a conference or something but it’s amazing to admire people from a distance and you meet them and they fulfill everything that you expect straight away. He’s come down, he’s watched our preparation, watched us in the box, watched all this stuff, then he’ll come and talk to us tomorrow about what he saw and we might have an ongoing relationship, who knows. For us we’re always confident about what we do but certainly not blinded to any innovation or anything we might be able to add to what we do so hopefully John can do that. It was great for the players to be able to see him and I think Nugget Reece was most impressed to see the great man in so Nugget gave us a bit of a chat after the game as well, terrific.
Mark, does a result like this make you wonder what could have been this year?
No, we don’t try to pretend. We’ve got ourselves up for this game. We are where we are and we’ll live with that. What we’re doing now is preparing for next year and that’s all we can do.
If this was within you why couldn’t you bring it out earlier? There’s been a lot of other important games.
Yep, if you know that, that’s the holy grail stuff of how do you turn people on each time and get the same result each time. As I said before, last year we were probably flattered a bit by winning a lot of close games. Over the last five or so years, we’ve been the number one side at doing it. Why hasn’t it happened this year? Well there’s a myriad of reasons and no-one’s really interested in them so we challenge ourselves to try the next time to get the same result and it’s only when you’re in that position that you can challenge yourself.
You say you’re preparing for next year, what do you want to see?
We’re focused on giving young players opportunities. Nick Lower played on Simon Goodwin for most of the day and that’s a pretty tough gig. We want to see how he goes against the best players in the AFL and that’s important. Bentley and Thomson played a lot of time in the centre square today and I think Chad played not one minute in the centre square, he played in the forward line the whole time.
Is there something in Danyle Pearce’s game that you felt needed to improve when you dropped him earlier in the season?
You don’t drop players if you don’t think they need to improve, so that would be true. Each and every one of our players we look for improvement so it’s not only him. He’s worked really closely with Matty Primus and Tony McGuinness. It was significant for us that Tony went out of his way to prepare a video about today. It was outstanding. I thought it had a significant influence on the result as well. I appreciate other people showing they care and he was certainly caring for his small on-ballers. He played a leading role in his career in that regard and he has a great relationship with those guys and he’s getting good results.
Mark, can you explain what the situation was with Daniel Motlop when every time he kicked a goal he came off, and he seemed so emotional in the way he sat on the bench.
Honestly, I didn’t see that but I know for a fact that Mots runs better and more than any other forward. Good luck. You try and watch it. Get the GPS and have a look at it. He’s just outstanding. He probably comes off buggered. A couple of times he was shooting for goal at the end of probably 300 metres of on-off sprinting, chasing, tackling, getting up and doing it again. Constantly he runs past half of our side, that’s how fast he’s going. He’s inspirational for all of us and we’re very lucky to have him.
Is there any feedback you’d give him from that moment under the old scoreboard with Salopek when he called for the ball and Salopek pushed it off to Ebert but Motlop continued to remonstrate about it?
No, look, people want to spend some time on Mots. They’re very critical. I think the people with the most flair in their game are easy to adore and easy to kick. The thing I recall is him taking the ball inside 50 there and handballing off to Westhoff, so if he wants to play dull and boring he wouldn’t have done that and Westhoff wouldn’t have kicked the goal that won us the game so you cant have it both ways. I would much rather players play to their strengths and for our supporters to enjoy someone who takes the game on rather than plays boring footy.
