What’s your feeling on Taylor Walker?
He’ll be in the 25 guys, so we obviously need to make a decision reasonably early because Norwood plays tomorrow night. I saw him play the last game he played and he was pretty good in the areas that I’m looking for, so we need to have a final discussion on that this afternoon and hopefully make a decision on that this afternoon or tomorrow.
Does sheer weight of goals mean anything?
No, it’s great that Taylor’s doing that, but that’s not the area of my concern or my previous concern with Taylor. And I will use the example again guys, just as it wasn’t my area of my concern of the ball use of Bernie Vince. Clearly that’s not the issue for me.
Is Bernie Vince back this week?
No, he won’t be in the 25.
Why’s that?
I think he’s been out for too long in terms of AFL. He was going to play just before he got injured, that’s put him back another two weeks. I want to make sure that Bernie is in really good shape and tested that hamstring, because when you come back now it’s absolutely full bore. You can’t ease into it, you can’t have a quarter, its full bore, so I want to make sure Bernie can get through a game of SANFL footy.
Last week for three and a half quarters you guys were outstanding, it was an amazing match, what do you put down to that last quarter? Was it more mental, was it more physical? How have you addressed that this week?
Well, we’ve certainly addressed it, as we should have. We’ve addressed the really good stuff that we’ve produced as well, as we should have. Who knows? Is it fatigue? That the fact that we’ve played at a really high level for three quarters and couldn’t match them? It could have been a bit of that. I think personally, overall the pressure came off the ball, in terminology that we use, so all of a sudden they start to get some easy ball into their forward line, it looked a bit Melbourne type game didn’t it? So that was poor. The composition of our side, they need to be exposed to that continually and that’s why we look forward to the next opportunity we get to do it better. So there were some things that we tried that didn’t come off, really poor execution of what we were trying to do and in the end, the momentum got so great for us that we capitulated, were not the first side that it’s happened too. I mean it was 11 goals in 20 minutes, so it was pretty continuous. I think the maximum time between goals was about a three minute period, so it was an avalanche that came through and wiped us out. I have a degree of sympathy or empathy for Rodney Eade as well because he probably felt the same thing.
Jonathon Brown was amazing last week in his comeback game, does Ben Rutten probably get first crack at him?
Well it depends, it will depend a little bit were Brown plays but in general Ben has taken him in the past, not for full games but has taken him the past and has got a reasonable record against Brown. He’s a champion player; he’s a great competitor as you saw last week.
Our capacity to handle those real champion players is never about one individual … it will be about our capacity to put pressure on, up the ground, so they just cant run down uncontested and then brown leads out and they go bang. If that happens he’ll kick ten, so the challenge is ahead of us.
Just on the changes to the training program, has there been much feedback in regards to how that’s traveling?
In general they think it’s good, this week has been slightly different to last week because last week they had an extra day. So we really need to finish this week off and this week will be finished off probably on Monday, with our recovery that gives us a full two weeks to make an assessment. My gut feel at the moment is that, what we’ve got in place will probably stay.
Brett Burton is in the enemy camp this week, have things changed enough this year for him not to be able give them too much information?
He knows our playing group pretty well. I’m not sure what their philosophy is at Brisbane whether they like a lot of individual information about players or whether they’re more concerned about our team play? Certainly, our team play, our ball movement patterns and the way we defend has changed a little bit so Brett wouldn’t be totally up to speed with that. But, there will be some information I would think that might be useful but it won’t decide the game in my opinion, it won’t decide the game.
Did you join the leadership group in talking to Adrian Anderson?
Separately, yeah Adrian and Andrew McKay spent time with the leadership group and then he met the coaches afterwards.
Any feedback or dialogue he might have in regards with the rules and the sub rule and anything else you might have talked about?
Yeah it was really an open forum, talk about whatever you like. The sub rule has been pretty kind to us, injury wise. Personally I don’t want the sub rule, but that’s purely talking as a coach. I would like to have the option, 6, 7 interchanges would be fantastic. But if you put your AFL hat on, I think the sub rule is providing the slight changes in the game that they wanted; a full year will give you more information on that.
But in general, our clubs pretty comfortable with the rules that are in place at the moment and the way the games heading, the demand on the players will always be high, no matter what rules you got in place. I’m not interested that the players are fatigued, I mean I expect the players to be fatigued, don’t you at the end of the game? Whatever rules were going to have, I expect the players to be fatigued.
Scott Stevens, how’s he coming along?
No pressure on Scott, he’s doing some outstanding work with us, he’s actually sort of starting to become another coach for us which is good for him, keeps him involved. The players have requested that, they respect the knowledge and the way he goes about his work, so he has become a really important off field resource.
