We’re already at the halfway mark of the season and it’s been a rollercoaster so far.

We were up for a while at the start with a series of really good wins, then down for a month which wasn’t so great.

So that’s why we were so happy after Sunday’s win over Essendon, to be back on the winner’s board and to get our confidence back.

I have to say a big thank-you to the SCG crowd. The crowd was one of the loudest I’ve heard since I played my first game in 2004. It was so inspiring for us to hear that.

In the last quarter it sounded like there were 50,000 people at the ground and knowing everyone is on your side really helps get us over the line. When it’s tense and tight, as it was in that last 15 minutes, and you hear everyone screaming and shouting, it lifts the boys, so please keep it up!

The seven-man leadership group, which I’m part of along with Kirky, Goodesy, Craig Bolton, Jude, Ryan and Shawy, had our usual meeting last week. It was nothing out of the ordinary really, but as a group we knew we had to stand up last weekend.

Of course we try to do our best every week, but we can’t all have a poor week as a group, which had been happening. There has to be at least four or five of the seven leaders playing well and that occurred against Essendon.

In saying that, the young guys have stood up and been playing well during the past few weeks, as well as the core group of LRT, Malceski and Grundy, so that has been the pleasing aspect and if we can all get up and running together, we’ll be a very good team in the back half of the year.

If we can beat Port Adelaide and get to seven (wins) and five (losses), we will take that, given the injuries we’ve had. And we might get a couple back, with Tadhg a chance this weekend, so we are setting ourselves up for a good hitout.

We had a light training session today, and we’ll get stuck into it on Thursday before we head to Adelaide for the Saturday night game at AAMI.

We’re all looking ahead to the week’s break after this round, but we’ve got a big game ahead of us against Port before we think too much about that.