“Footy’s different every Monday. Last Monday we had come off four consecutive wins against teams that were around the middle of the ladder. We came up against a team this week that had only lost one game for the year and that’s how they played.”
“We didn’t have enough players that played anywhere near their potential. The only player we had that probably won his position was Jonathan Brown. I wouldn’t have thought that anyone else in our team was winning their position.”
“They tackled us into error better than we tackled them into error. I reckon we got the ball into our forward 70 a fair bit, but that half-forward area was a bit of a brick wall for us.”
“In the general concept of the parts of the field, I thought our back group was our most competitive. Our backline was under siege because the ball was coming in so often. I thought they held up fairly well until the last five minutes of the match.”
“I don’t think we’re ten goals off the top four. We didn’t play well enough on the day but I still think we would have a fair chance of winning if we were to play them again next week. We would obviously have to play a lot better than we did on Saturday but that’s what human performance is all about – it does fluctuate.”
On players’ decision-making:
“The real decision-making in footy now is when you are coming through the middle of the field and reading what’s ahead of you. If it’s a one-on-one contest, you will probably be prepared to back your forwards. But if it’s two-on-one against us then it will be hard to win that contest. That’s where the decision making comes in.”
“The great thing about this game is that every time a player has the ball in his hands, he’s probably going to see different things.”
On the Lions’ injured players:
“We never play anyone that we don’t think is alright. If the medical people clear them, then the conditioning people have to clear them. If they both clear them then we have to make the decision on whether they play.”
“Scott Harding didn’t play on the weekend but he was virtually cleared to play by the conditioning people. We just weren’t quite sure about how his knee would cope if he fell on it again. So we decided to leave him out of the team even though he had virtually been given the all-clear. That was one example of when the match committee made the decision. We just thought the risk was too high.”
“Michael Rischitelli will be okay. He was pretty close to playing against the Bulldogs but if he had received a bad knock on the day, it might have sent him off for the entire match and we just couldn’t take that risk. I would have thought that he is about 99% certain to play against Adelaide.”
“I’m not too sure about Travis Johnstone. He felt something early in the game so he must be questioned.”
