What did you make of that performance?

I thought our boys were pretty brave, obviously not at Brisbane’s standard, but we were a little bit undermanned and obviously both teams had a lot to play for. I thought we played with spirit, we just weren’t good enough in the end, we didn’t handle their pressure in the last half. Having said that, it was game on at three quarter time, I think a couple of goals late in quarters hurt us, actually our forward 50 stoppage goals two against, went the full length of the ground, gave them that little buffer, but ran out of steam in the end, and obviously didn’t go our way.

Where was it lost?

They elevated their pressure, we couldn’t sustain what we were doing, a couple of costly, undisciplined free kicks down the field. Or a free kick after a point, pushed it out to 17 points. Obviously Brisbane were playing for a larger margin and they really challenged that, and we were playing to win as well, so we opened the game up a little bit because we wanted to win, we didn’t want to just deny Brisbane an opportunity to play top four, so we went a bit harder at that sense, so you’ve got to take those risks in the last quarter. So it blew out in the last 10, 15 minutes. But overall, we hung in there and we fought pretty hard, we just weren’t good enough.

You must be proud of your leadership?

Oh, absolutely. I think our leaders stood up well tonight, Nic (Naitanui) had 23-odd possessions, 10 clearances, Luke (Shuey) had 13 clearances himself, so effort was there today. Energy and effort was there from the start, and unfortunately there’s been too many times this year where we haven’t brought that same intensity when we’ve needed to. So, we’ve got to learn and grow from that. But there was some positive signs tonight, in terms of the younger team, the spirit, learn a good lesson. We probably had our youngest backline for the last eight years, really, with Tom Barrass being our oldest player. And they’re (Brisbane) a very good forward-line as well. So, we’ll take some growth out of this game, whereas there’s been some games in recent times that have just been disappointing.

Does it leave you thinking ‘what if’?

Yeah look, it’s not something I’m reflecting on right now, it’s obvious, the inconsistencies we’ve had this year with a whole wide range of things that we’ll look into. The injuries, the synergy, the fluctuations in game, all those things we’re going to look at. We’ll dig pretty deep on it all, and we’ve got to get better. So, we get an opportunity, it’s been a pretty big campaign over the last several years, and we need to take a breath, work out how we’re going to get better. Starts with everything in our department so we’ll get onto that.

Do you think a majority of this group can push for another Premiership?

I still think there’s lots of talent on our list, there’s some good kids coming through. Obviously we’ll look at getting our list better, straight away, as best we can. But I think there’s still plenty of growth in some of our younger players, and some of our senior players, you look at tonight, you can’t say that they’re not holding up their end. So, got to bring it all together, and make sure we get some synergy back, and we need a really good pre-season.