In the mid-season review we talked about the players that have improved, those who haven’t and why. There’s a major concern about our injury rate especially amongst our younger players, which has impacted on their rate of improvement but we think Matthew Lobbe, Travis Boak, Paul Stewart, Daniel Stewart, Cameron Hitchcock, Jackson Trengove, Mitch Banner, Jason Davenport, Brett Ebert, Tom Logan, Danyle Pearce, Steven Salopek, Jay Schulz, Matt Thomas, Nick Salter, Daniel Bass, Cameron Cloke and Daniel Webb have all improved. Kane Cornes has kept his form up, but there are quite a few guys whose level of improvement has remained the same and a few of the older guys haven’t improved and that’s a concern. Robbie Gray, Hamish Hartlett and Nathan Krakouer have hardly played because of injury. David Rodan did his knee and Daniel Motlop had no pre-season and then missed the first few games. They are all quality ball users, so those injuries have really impacted on our ability to move the ball and our forward line has been decimated. There have been a lot of things that haven’t really helped us, but in saying that we’re ranked second in the AFL in contested possession and also second tackles, which are two key areas we wanted to work on from last year. Our kicking isn’t good enough so we want to keep working on that. We’ve played the equal-second highest number of players this season and the second-most debutants. Another positive is that the new leadership model has been going pretty well and the mood of the group, given the fact that we’ve lost the last six games, is still pretty high.
Are Chad Cornes and Dean Brogan two of the older guys you’re talking about? Both started the season pretty well, but appear to have dropped off in recent weeks.
I do the best and fairest voting and score how I think the guys have played and Chad got some significant votes at the start of the year. People obviously forget that because it’s easy to forget. Probably as the team has wandered on and not played as well, Chad has wandered with it. He’s not alone, but because he’s older people try and identify that. I watch his games and he’s trying his heart out, which he’s always done. The things that he can normally turn around very quickly haven’t happened as easily this time and that might be to do with his age, but it’s probably a lot to do with how the team is playing as well.
Is Dean Brogan in the same boat?
Yeah. He’s had some back problems and he’s carrying the load of the vice-captaincy and the ruck department. It’s tough for him, so we have to be mindful of that.
Jackson Trengove has provided some good support in the ruck over the first half of the season. You’d imagine he’d start to tire at some stage being his first season in the AFL. Should we expect Matthew Lobbe to get more of a run over the next nine or so weeks, or will Daniel Stewart be used more in the ruck?
It’s an interesting question and a selection dilemma. Jackson and Lobbes are both around the same age, so you want to get games into both but you probably can’t play both of them at the same time. Matty Lobbe is a better ruckman, but doesn’t get many possessions around the ground and Jackson is the opposite. We have to try and work out what fits best for the side. We also discussed that [playing more in the ruck] with Daniel Stewart yesterday.
You mentioned the injury rate amongst the club’s younger players. Your first three picks from last year’s draft - John Butcher (back), Andrew Moore (groin) and Jasper Pittard (hamstring) - have all spent significant time on the sidelines. Is that a major concern or to be expected to a certain extent, as they make the transition to AFL football?
We’ve looked pretty carefully at that. We quizzed our medical staff and asked them, if they had the same presentation or injury report prior to the draft that they do now would they still pick those players? They were pretty adamant that most players have some form of injury [when they come to the club] and most of them get over it. We’ve been a bit unfortunate with a couple of picks [in the past]. We didn’t pick Joel Selwood because of his knee. It’s easy in hindsight to say ‘you knew he had that injury’ when a player suffers a reoccurrence but you can miss out on some very good players if you eliminate them based on childhood injuries.
Did the review identify any problems with the club’s training program or workload?
We thought we trained too hard over the pre-season. Not just the new guys, but everyone in general. We didn’t make the finals last year, so we wanted to take our training right to the edge and maybe we took a few of the players over the top. It’s always a very fine line, but we want to be a fit club and we want to be a team that is really confident in its ability to run out games.
The club has found it difficult to cover the absence of the injured Warren Tredrea this season. It hasn’t helped that other guys in the forward line have fallen down around him, but do you have players to fill the void in attack should Tredrea choose to retire at the end of the year?
It’s been a major concern that we haven’t been able to have the same forward line. Every week the structure up there has been something different. Jay Schulz did a terrific job for us last week. Since his arrival at the start of the pre-season he’s done as much, if not more, than we expected from him straight up. He’s been up and down with a few little injuries. Daniel Stewart we’re really pleased with. We think he is going to be a player, but he’ll take time. Cameron Hitchcock has been good and Jason Davenport has been good in patches. 'Ebo' (Brett Ebert), if he had kicked a bit straighter, would have had a terrific season. On the downside, Daniel Motlop hasn’t been delivering like we expect, but he missed the pre-season and the first five or six games and Robbie Gray has hardly been there at all, so our real clever and consistent goalkickers haven’t been there.
Warren Tredrea was in pretty good form before he got injured. The talk around Adelaide is that he’s leaning towards retirement. Do you try and convince him either way?
Tredders is just working on his rehab. He’s trying to get himself back playing towards the end of the year, but there hasn’t been any real discussion [about his future] with him at all. We’ll let him march on, recover and make sure that his rehab is right so that he can present again in round 18 or 19 - it’ll be around then.
Robbie Gray, Hamish Hartlett and Nathan Krakouer have been plagued by injury during their short careers at the club. Do you subscribe to the theory that you should trade one or two of them on in exchange for more durable players?
Robbie, Hamish and Krak are three players we definitely want to keep. They are your best-quality players. You invest a lot of time and effort into them and you’ve got to make sure you get good results from them. We’ll continue to manage them and we hope that they have long and healthy careers in front of them. We sent Robbie, Hamish and Travis Boak up to the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) to get some other opinions in regards to their bodies. We had some minor adjustments to what we do and its fantastic that the doctors, physios and fitness people are open to finding other things. We’ll search whatever we can to get the best results for our players.
There has been a lot of speculation about Krakouer and his alleged links to Gold Coast. You said at the start of the year that you wouldn’t select a player, if you discovered that he’d already signed with the new club and there are conspiracy theorists suggesting that this is the case with Krakouer. What are your thoughts?
(Laughs) No. Krak has OP (osteitis pubis) and he’s had it for so long I can’t even remember. People that know OP know that it takes a long time to get over, but we’re thinking he’s a couple of weeks away from playing.
The mid-season break is often a time for contract talk. Has the club made any progress in its bid to re-sign Travis Boak?
No…I think this week is when it [Boak’s contract] is scheduled to be talked about. It’s not like it hasn’t been talked about, but it was booked in for this week, not last week, that’s all.
Do you expect Dean Laidley to be here again next year?
Yes, Dean is contracted with the club and we’d be keen to see with a full pre-season what else we can get from him because he’s been terrific so far.
Kevin Sheedy has been a bit mischievous, saying that he’d be keen to get you onboard with the new Greater Western Sydney team. Is it just that - mischief?
(Laughs) Kevin. He’s always saying something. No, I actually haven’t followed too much of what’s going on over there. I see that they’ve got Israel Folau, but it seems a long way away from what’s happening here. It’ll be interesting to watch Karmichael Hunt and how his development goes. I think we’ll keep some sort of eye on that kind of stuff. As someone who spends a lot of time with people teaching and helping them to kick, it’ll be interesting to see how they develop Karmichael and Israel for that matter.
Finals are still a mathematical possibility. Is that still the goal for the remaining nine rounds of the season?
It’s going to be very difficult because there are a stack of clubs that have still got some sort of chance. We’ll keep pushing, being very competitive and keep coaching our players to understand how we want to play. At the start of the year were we going to win the premiership? Probably not. It was all about developing our players and that’s the path we’re going to continue on with. Hopefully, we can make the finals but either way they are going to be much better prepared this time next year and hopefully we’ve got a lot more players to pick from.
