How proud are you of the boys?

We had a good night, absolutely. I think we’re getting harder to play against at home, which is always the first step on a rebuild. The Essendon game we probably didn’t play our greatest footy, but we were in touch, the stats weren’t pretty, and that was the reflection of the past three weeks, but tonight we got the game on our terms for most of the night, and we got rewarded.

Bailey Williams, the question was ‘how is he going to deal with Max Gawn’, and a lot of guys helped him out where the could, but he seemed to nullify the influence and compete all night?

There’s not much you can do against Max, other than really focus in, and as a collective, you’ve really got to put work into him as a whole team. He’s so good, and hard to stop, I think he may have been the difference at certain stages, but Bailey, to his credit, did the best job he possibly could. We had a couple of role players tonight who really stood up, Dom had (Clayton) Oliver for the most part, even Jamaine Jones putting pressure on the front half, just little roles that we had for our players, they executed them well and we all got rewarded.

What’s the key to you specifically (playing well) at home, to win three of your past four here, and you mentioned the Essendon game as well, to lose by just six?

The biggest key is probably the crowd, and trying to engage with them and bring them on our journey as much as we can. That and our past players, we’ve got a lot of first nations players and past players in the rooms before the game, so we’re trying to grow together with our fans and supporter base, so that was really important. And then the basics, I’ve said this from the start, we’re just trying to get good at clearances, general play, contested possessions, forward half turnovers, just staying basic. Every time we deviate, we seem to take a step back, but the guys had a good night in those stats.

It's one thing to challenge a good team, but then when they challenge you back and you respond, that shows a bit more maturity, were you happy with that level as well?

We’re not as young as North Melbourne or Hawthorn, we’ve still got six or seven All-Australian, premiership, mature players who have dealt with big games, so I think our leaders are doing a tremendous job to stand up in important moments. Third quarter we probably didn’t handle great, I thought we lost our way a little bit, but McGovern, Duggan, Barrass, Darling, Darling had 12 tackles tonight in the forward fifty, Waterman is now a mature aged player, Dom, there’s some experience there, some pretty good players still on our list who we just haven’t seen together for three years.

What did you make of Harley Reid’s goal in the first quarter?

It was pretty good! I knew it was going to blow up on social media, that’s what I knew. He was really important for us tonight, he’s carrying a heavy weight at the moment and I’m really trying to be cautious about how much attention he gets, but when he plays like that, it just looked like he had fun tonight, and that’s our goal for him, to enjoy being an AFL player. Some of the things that we do, in particular in the west, sometimes it’s not fun... So, just keep an eye on him for us, we want to keep him here as long as we can. When he’s enjoying the game for what it is, and playing to his strengths, we’re all happy, and if he plays well, we take that, if he doesn’t then that’s ok too, he’s 19 years old. But I thought he really enjoyed himself tonight.

How do you see the connection between Harley and the crowd in those big moments like tonight?

We’re trying to connect with our crowd as much as we can, I think it’s a real advantage. If we get 50 thousand rock up, it doesn’t matter if it’s Harley or first gamers or McGovern, we think it’s an advantage. We lost that for a few years, and that’s on us, so we really want to engage our supporters as much as we can and Harley obviously is the ‘new toy’, but he’s pretty good to play with.

Liam Ryan has a bit of spring back in his step, a bit different to last few weeks tonight?

We’ve got to be patient with Liam, he’s missed 12 months of football, two surgeries on both hamstrings. And he did his hammy flying for that mark against Fremantle last year, so we’ve just got to be patient with him but it felt like he had a spring in his step, Sir Doug Nicholls Round, all our first nations guys played with a little edge on their shoulder tonight and we really enjoyed seeing them out there.

Was there any sign during the preseason that Jake Waterman was going to produce the season he is at the moment?

I think Matty Knights (Assistant Coach – Forwards) going to our forward line has really helped Jakey express himself, so he’s got a lot to do with that, letting him play to his strengths, fly for marks, maybe ‘JK’ (Josh Kennedy) not being around or Oscar, maybe he’s flexing a little bit, Jakey. But he’s a role player still, and he’s playing his role, he’s competing, we just want our forwards to compete, and then the pressure comes off that.