What’s the feeling, Adam?

It’s bizarre, really, the last 10 days for the nation. We’re part of that. I’m proud of our players; I’m proud of Melbourne’s players as well for putting on a show for a brief time. Hopefully we put a smile on some people’s faces for a few days. I didn’t miss a minute; I watched every game. Unfortunately we close down like everyone else, we look after our families like everyone else and we move on.

What was it like knowing as you were preparing to play the game (that the season had been suspended)?

That was interesting. I sort of knew in the car, just getting to the ground. I thought, do you tell the players or do you not talk about it? But we spoke about it with our leaders first. I didn’t know whether to say ‘boys, this is the last game for two or three months, so let’s treat it like a grand final or this is just round one, it’s four points’. You know there are some people who might have watched their last game of footy ever today. For the people and supporters of West Coast, in particular, we are proud of our players. There was that and they looked a little bit flat, but they are flat a lot sometimes when I talk pre-game, so I got no read. They came out and started well, I thought Melbourne started well as well. We took our opportunities and they didn’t early, and then the game sort of meandered there in the back half for the last quarter and a half. But I thought when the game was up for grabs we put our foot down and got it done.

Have you talked about what you will do with the players immediately?

The players will look after this; it’s a couple more days before we send them away for an extended break. They are professionals, they’ll work through that. Our attention now goes to our families and our staff and what we can do to help the situation we find all of ourselves in is critical. We are fortunate that we’ve got some really good leaders at West Coast, led by (chief executive) Trevor (Nisbett) and (chairman) Russell (Gibbs) and (General manager of football) Craig Vozzo as well. They’ve been trying to look after our staff as best they can, because it’s not going to be the same when it all starts up again. That’s probably our priority. They players will have a remote program; they’ll look after themselves. We’ll be back someday and we’ve just got to make sure that we look after each other.

The young parents at the moment, how are they handling everything given, I imagine, they’re worried about their kids?

I think we’re all the same, aren’t we? You would be the same as JK. I think we treat everyone the same with that. The fact is the players put their hands up and in the end it was the players who said they will play, so I think we’ve got to acknowledge the fact that they’ve done what they did in the last five or six days. The AFL have done a really good job of trying to keep the show on the road and it ends today, so we move on. We probably go to looking after our families as much as anything too. We are no different than you guys.

You mentioned watching every game this round, is that a normal thing?

Yeah, it is as little bit. I like footy. I hate it when the game gets criticised. It ebbs and flows. We’ll get some interesting concepts from the last eight games on how shorter quarters look. Do we get to see our stars on the ground more? Do we get more scoring? If it’s relative to an 125 minute game, has the scoring gone up? I don’t know. We’ll get a look at that. I’m sure the AFL in the back of their mind will get a sense of what it might look like in the future, but no one really knows what it’s going to look like at the moment. I watch every game and enjoy the commentary. I just miss the crowd.

How do you go about now trying to keep the team unity and keeping people connected when they can’t physically they might not be able to?

I don’t know. We’re all in that boat, aren’t we? How do we all stay connected with society when we’re at home? I suppose more than ever there is technology and they are all on their WhatsApp groups, they’re all on their online stuff. This is probably a little bit like off-season, except they’re not going overseas. No one is going to Bali. No one is going to Vegas. We are lucky we live in this state; there is so much to offer. A lot of our guys get away, go out bush, they like the outdoors. Hopefully that’s okay to do. And if it is okay I’m sure that some of them will get away and go camping. But they’ve got to keep fit; the season has just started and we’ll be back on deck maybe in a month. We mentioned that we might reconvene to find out what the next month looks like. Hopefully it all goes well for us. They will be on a remote program, they will look after themselves. We will elevate things when we need to like everyone else.

What did you make, strictly from an on-field sense, Nic (Naitanui’s) performance in the ruck and Tim Kelly’s first game?

I thought we started well. I thought Melbourne started well and didn’t capitalise. The game was really big; the ground was big all the time. There wasn’t a lot of rolling mauls; it was in or it was out in terms of congested situation. I think we got touched up in the contest. I thought they worked a little bit harder between contests, but we probably had a little bit more polish and we made them pay at times when it was to-ing and fro-ing and we’d kick a couple of goals. That burst in the last half of the first quarter probably set us up. I looked halfway through the last quarter and I actually stayed down here for a while, I was just watching on the sidelines and nothing happened for 10 minutes and there was only 10 minutes left. It probably worked to our advantage that it was a bit of a stalemate in that quarter. Perhaps if it was a 30 minute quarter the challenge might have been different. I think the last half probably wasn’t the most exciting footy people would have watched, but it was footy nonetheless.