What did you think of the girl’s performance today?

We did a few things right early, we knew the game the Bulldogs wanted to play being that short uncontested game. We were on top of it most of the game then in the last quarter they took 20 uncontested marks and it just got away from us from that point of view. The challenge for us is to find ways to score a bit more, we are getting opportunities then not converting in front of goal then letting them go inside 50 to score easily. It’s something we will continue to look at and work to fix and get on top of pretty soon.

Their tackle pressure was up today, how did you feel you coped with?

They out tackled us there’s no question about that. I just spoke to our group about our forward 50 tackles, we had two for the game so it’s not helping us lock the ball in our forward 50 or have time in our forward half. Our forwards need to get to work and lay a few more tackles and put that pressure on and off the back scoring opportunities will come for us.

Obviously the talent is there up forward but what next step towards scoring a bit more?

Time in our forward half and more inside 50s. We’ve got talent in our front half, we just need to work a little bit harder. But that will come, we’ve got a young group at the moment and we are still learning and improving. The key thing for us is finding more ways to get inside 50s.

The cheer for Ash Gomes was enormous when she came on for the first time. What did you think of her debut?

It was well deserved she came into our group a week before round one, has trained really hard and has put her best foot forward. She deserves the opportunity – great to see her kick a goal in her first game. It was good to see Eleanor (Hartill) go froward and kick a goal for us as well. There’s probably things in our side that we can look at for next week and probably make some positional changes to help us hit the scoreboard.

Is there potential to use Eleanor up forward?

She’s still learning the game, she’s very raw and to play the amount of footy that she has this year for us has been exceptional considering where she’s come from. After one year of amateur football she came here to Mineral Resources Park for a ‘come try’ day, took a few marks and had a bit of height. Where she’s come in six months has been outstanding. Potentially down the track she could become a key forward for us but we’ve liked what she’s done down back, opponents haven’t really scored on her this year. We thought we’d change it up for her, try her in the ruck and try her up forward to see what we got today.

With the loss today Fremantle go up top on the ladder beating Sydney earlier in the day that means you get the first draft pick again. Is there any worth to it considering it’s a mature aged draft?

It doesn’t concern me where Freo finish on the ladder compared to us. It is what it is and we just play each week as it comes and it terms of the draft, we are drafting out of the same pool so it doesn’t really matter.

How are you going to approach this draft? Is it worth delisting and relisting some players?

It’s something that we will sit down over the next couple of weeks after our season has finished and really hone in on that, at the moment I’m not even concerned about it.

Emma Swanson and another outstanding performance today. Do you think she suffers a bit over here in terms of how the competition sees her? Do you think she gets the kudos that she deserves?

Potentially not. Since I’ve been at the club, I’ve seen her drive this group and set the standard both on and off the field and maybe sometimes she doesn’t get the credit she deserves. Internally between the four walls of this footy club she gets a lot of credit for what she does and she deserves that. She’s the captain of our group for a reason and as I’ve said before she leads our group really well, but she also leads our entire club. We are rapt to have her and really happy with the way she’s gone about her footy and for our younger players being able to learn from Emma is a huge bonus of them.

Melbourne next week to round out the season, what mentality do you take into a clash against a top four contender?

We are really looking forward to it. I spoke to the girls then and said we’ve got to recover well, prepare well and go over there and see where a competitive game of footy takes us. If we go over there with our tail between our legs thinking that we are going to get defeated well we may as well not turn up. We’ll train well this week and we’ll go over there and give it a real shot and see where it takes us.