Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin spoke to the media following his side’s 13-point win over Adelaide on Saturday night. This is what he had to say.

On winning in ‘hostile’ territory

We want to experience these moments and type of games; it’s hostile, you’re away from home. It was a pretty big prize to play for tonight in terms of the four points.

It’s been brewing for a fair while. As a club we were probably under a bit of pressure this week after the way we lost last week. To show that character and belief in the playing group and the club, and the group of coaches, I thought it was outstanding. To be in a position where we were 20 points down early, clearly not playing our best footy, to come back and have that sort of response was a great way to play.

On winning clearances and defence

We’ve got a really talented group that work strongly together. Max Gawn obviously helps that that as well. Clayton Oliver, Angus Brayshaw, James Harmes, Nathan Jones, they got a will to win, to compete, and they operate in a system around the ball that’s very strong at the moment and they have great belief in what they do. We’re naturally a relatively high scoring team so that gives the group confidence that if they’re in the game long enough and working hard then eventually we’ll have our moment to score. I’ve been more impressed with our defence recently, in the last four or five weeks, our ability to defend the ground, hold up our end of bargain’s been really strong.

On Adelaide’s late charge

It was nerve-wracking, wasn’t it? It was tense, obviously being in that position last week and they [Adelaide] were coming hard again this week. We’d obviously learnt some stuff during the week about how we wanted to manage those situations better and I thought the boys executed the majority of things well.