They fought all the way, what do you make of that?
I think we played as well as we could have. We played with spirit, good tackle pressure – stuff we’ve been working on since the bye but we couldn’t sustain it. We know they missed a few shots, and they are good a side, so we were beaten by a better side, but you can’t question our effort tonight. We made some good steps forward over the last 10 weeks without the wins and there is no excuse, but we are missing a few. We are probably missing 10 players and we saw some growth with some of our younger players – O’Neill, Bazzo, Hough and Harry Edwards. They are stepping up and getting a good opportunity to play in front of 53,000 and a big game for Fremantle obviously so we will take some positives out of it but we didn’t win. We probably were not in the game for the last eight or nine weeks. It’s been within two or three goals most weeks and we can’t sustain it.
Barrass and Hurn performance in defence?
I’m campaigning officially now for Barrass to be All Australian because he’s not just winning he’s position – he’s dominating it as a fullback. I think he was the highest ranked player today again, but that’s not for me to judge.
What has changed? Was it McGovern going down and Barrass needing to take responsibility?
He’s just in the prime of his career, a leader, plays the game the right way and he’s got the balance between defending and going up for his marks. So, all credit to him.
We are conceding a few, I get that. But he is playing on the best forward in the opposition team every week at the moment and like I said, its not that he is holding his own – he is dominating. He’s leadership has been exceptional so we could have folded a lot worse than we are at the moment. There was that five or six week period where we were down on personnel and we were getting touched up and I think he’s been part of the resolve that we have shown. We are still not happy – we’ve won two games for the year so I can’t sit here and say we are satisfied but I’m seeing growth and the little wins we have spoken about. Hopefully we can finish the season off against the Cats next week as best we can and then we get stuck into getting fit, get personnel back, hit the draft, and have a good crack.
A red-hot start, did you want your players to bring a physical edge?
Yeah, they played the game the right way – it’s a derby. I wish we could play like that every week in terms of it’s not personal but there is an edge to the game. The way that the game is played these days, the way that everyone knows each other, the way that there is a bit more respect and conversations had it just doesn’t happen as much, but I thought they took it to a level that made Freo earn it. That was the minimum we could have done tonight.
Did you drive that?
I think the leaders drove it. I spoke to the players on Monday about the JK game and how we are going to deal with it this week and they were going, ‘it’s all okay we are ready to go’ so I know it probably sounds too positive at the moment and we’ve lost a lot of games this year. We could have packed it in, but we didn’t.
What did you make of Jackson Nelsons role?
He was probably the catalyst really. He did the job on Brayshaw earlier in the year to half time and this year we gave him the full game. He hasn’t played for several weeks, and he came in and I think he did it the right way. There wasn’t a lot of malice in it although there was a bit of melee there and I’m sure he was part of it but that’s footy isn’t it, when he had the job, he had a good go at it.
Why don’t we see more of that? When a tagger plays like that it influences games.
It does but you’ve got to sacrifice a spot in the midfield so if you’re a top four, six or eight side you’ve probably got five midfielders that are exceptional players and you’ve got to sacrifice a spot so that’s what you’ve got to way up. We’ve got a few players unavailable at the moment so it gave us an opportunity to go after Brayshaw and he’s had a really good year so what do you want to sacrifice. Sometimes you do that, and the collective gets it done against you. We dropped at half time the last time we played because their collective was too good, but we saw it through tonight – the score was close enough.
Jamaine Jones not a season ending injury? How bad is it?
He’s back just seized up, we weighed up before the game whether to pull him out. He’s had a big year, so he’s carried some injuries like a lot of our players – they are a bit banged up but trying to do the right thing so he just couldn’t last.
Nic Nat looks like he’s putting in so much effort, the vibe I feel is that he is just sore?
Well, he’s probably another one, he’s just playing because the club needs him so we’ve got to be careful and don’t put any unnecessary risk to his career or next year, but he needs a good break and preseason and comeback next year ready to go.
Do you think he’ll get back up for next week?
I’m not sure, we need to look at it. We’ve tried to respect the season as best as we could. There have been opportunities to maybe rest or shut down players but to be honest we’ve got probably 15 injuries at the moment so some players are playing sore but it’s not worth winging, it’s just the way it is. We are not happy about it, and we are not happy about a lot of things, but I can’t question our leaders.
Was it worrying watching Nic on that long chase along the wing?
He’s hit 36 km/h before, I don’t know if he hit that tonight, but he tried. I don’t think the open field stuff worries me; he’s just underdone so that’s just the way it is. He’s missed 12 weeks in between, came out round four and came back round 15.
It’s a tough finish next week against Geelong but it’s an opportunity to play against the top side, would you expect that sort of aggression and that sort of start and build up?
We’ve had a better side play in Geelong and lost by 100 points so I think I said last time its going to put some hair on our chest, but I think its going to be Danger’s 300th game. I think if we play like we did today and we bring spirit and we know that it’s been a tough year but we acknowledge we can still bring effort. There was that period in the year we probably didn’t do that before the bye but I thought we brought that this week so hopefully we can do that again.
You laid 170 odd tackles in two weeks, is that what we should expect next year as well and is this what you’re wanting to be - a hard tackling team?
We spoke before the season started about our identity and we wanted to change a few things and look a bit more like this. I think with some talent and personnel back, it might compliment being a bit more assertive and aggressive with where the game is at. The game has changed so we’ve got a lot more contest, craft, squeezing the game and putting teams under pressure and that hasn’t been our identity even through our premiership season. So, we’ve got to adapt, and we are trying our best to do that but at the moment it is just going to take time. We’ve got to get our personnel back and see what it looks like. We were a different side than we were at the start of the year without the personnel. So hopefully we bring that back and we get some uplift but there is not guarantee.
You struggled to get the ball out back out of your defensive end in that second half in particular, would you put that down to Jones not being there with that run or was there something else?
No, I think Fremantle defend the ground well. You can’t talk about ball movement if you are doing it from your goal line, they missed a lot of shots kicking 17 points, so we are having a go 17 times from the defensive goal line. Barrass had 14 intercepts, so there are 30 odd opportunities where we are in our deep 50 trying to build the ball up against a team that is really good defensively. So, there is no doubt I am pleased with how they played – they showed resilience and it was a grind for them, but they got what they were looking for and we’ve got work to do.
