First of all on behalf of the Port Adelaide Football Club I’d like to thank Mr Rann and Mr Foley for giving our club $2.5 million for the development of our facility, which is fantastic, and I think they gave the Crows the same and a $100 million to AAMI Stadium.
I know the Western Australians over here are getting a brand new stadium. It’s fantastic to think that we’ll have ours upgraded and I’m sure it’s going to be great for football in South Australia.
It was a really gutsy win for our club today. In my history (as senior coach) we’ve never brought three emergencies over. We had real concerns of sickness through our group. In fact I was here watching the under 18’s before I knew that Dom Cassisi wasn’t playing.
So for the players to handle those distractions and have a bit of doubt about whether they could get through the game or not; the mental courage they showed certainly at three quarter time to keep going, said it was a pretty significant win for us. It was also great calls by our doctors and physios to get them through.
If you were to put the fact that Chad Cornes had missed a bit of footy and certainly Michael Wilson, on top of that (doubt over players), you would understand the anxiety we had and the amount of rotations we did in the third quarter just to try and get them through the game.
Beyond Cassisi how many did you have that you were worried about?
There were three other players, so it was a pretty significant win for us, and we’re delighted about it. The recovery will be important, coming back from Perth; we’ll really have to look after them this week. Obviously for those that knew we were looking after them last week, we thought we’d played pretty well.
So it just wasn’t gastro, there was other things as well?
There was a bit of both, yes. What were your thoughts at three-quarter time? Did you feel that the group could get over Fremantle? Did you mention their record?
To me Fremantle’s record wasn’t significant. It was our record as to how much we wanted to play in the finals and that’s all we had to drag out. The Fremantle crowd did a wonderful thing in trying to get their players up and you could certainly hear the noise. For us to stay focussed – and we had a real goal to work towards and that was to keep going whatever slim chance we still have (of making the finals) – was great. It’s only half the season gone, so we’d like to think we’ve still got a chance of making it and if we play well, we will.
There seems to be vast extremes between your best and your worst. Your second and last quarters are good and your first and third quarters were pretty ordinary. Why such vast differences in going well and going bad?
You have to always acknowledge the opposition. They (Fremantle) had a lot to prove. They came out (having a real go), Chad got smashed and a couple of others got smashed. There’s always the opposition you have to consider. I think most the scoring was done down the other end; certainly most of the goals were scored down one end, so maybe there was a slight advantage going that way.
You only had 38 inside-50’s, which is a pretty low number for you. Is there a reason you thought why you couldn’t get it cranking up?
We turned over the ball I would think 10 metres outside the 50 so many times, and I would think a lot of that had to do with them setting up a spare player. To Jason Cripps’s credit I thought he kept mixing and matching and I thought we got some great results from our forward line today. Kicking more than 100 points when you’re away is a good performance, especially when you only kick two goals in the fist quarter.
Why do you think you were more efficient this week compared to last week?
It’s easy to see the scoreboard – we kicked straight. Last week we kicked so many points and out of bounds and this week we didn’t.
What changes that? Is it purely for the week you had?
If you look at any team each week you will see no team kicks 16.7 , which is I think we kicked today. No team kicks that percentage every week, week after week and we’ll take our turn and by the end of it, probably their goal-kicking cost them and ours won us the game.
Motlop today, what did you make of his efforts?
That goal he kicked at the start of the last quarter, you had to be here to see it didn’t you? It was one of the great goals of all time and I know he doesn’t get too much respect outside of South Australia but I honestly thought his goal last year (against Brisbane at the Gabba) was goal of the year, so I’m waiting to see what goal beats that.
Do you sympathise with Freo? That’s the fifth game straight they’ve capitulated in the last quarter?
I know they’d be working very hard. I know lots of their coaching staff and quite a few of their players. They’ll be really really disappointed but at the same time I’m sure they are focussed on some young players, who are really coming on and I thought they played particularly well today. It seems like this year won’t be their year but I’m sure that they’re going to get some real positives out of the year, probably just like West Coast.
Without Ebert, did you change your roles for any of your forwards?
Yes, we had some change of roles. It was important for Motlop to come down the ground at some stage and for Westhoff to come down the ground. We probably played our tall ruckman in the forward line quite a bit more than we have in recent times. As I said I thought it was well worked and a great result.
Did you want Wetshoff further towards goals this time rather than further out?
At different time he was. If you look at percentage of time, he probably was.
Were finals hopes on the line today?
As far as I was concerned the players put that on the line, so as I said, it’s a pretty good carrot to drop in front of the players. We’ve been playing good without getting a result. Fremantle feel bad about it, but the truth is we’re playing a lot better than where we are (on the ladder), so they had to come up against a pretty good side.
Which week do you think you played better, last week or this?
That’s a good point. I thought we played better last week. We played a great game last week as I said. People dismiss it because we lost, but I would suspect if you looked at Adelaide’s game the other night they probably didn’t think they played that well, but they won. We thought we played pretty well last week and lost. In the end no-one cares; it’s all about winning and I understand that.
In terms of winning what do you think you need to get some momentum going, instead of this stop-start, to get your season on a role?
We won three games in a row (rounds 5-7), so we got some momentum going, and then we came up against Hawthorn and not too many people have beaten them this year and we were certainly a chance to beat them, and then Sydney last week. If you look at the last six weeks since we came over here and played West Coast, our momentum has been pretty good.
I thought there were some significant things today. I thought Alipate Carlile played particularly well. I thought Pettigrew played a lot lot better. I thought Chaplin did a couple of new roles and a good job.
So probably that group last Monday where I talked about ‘haven’t progressed as much as they had the previous year; and those who had a huge development the previous year were maybe marking time a little bit’, I thought they took a really big step today and all credit to them.
You don’t think the eight is set, as has been said elsewhere?
I know that if we won every game until the end of the year then the eight is not set. It’s really up to us and we’ll take on each game as it comes and look forward to playing Carlton this week.
