Where did it all go wrong?

We lost field position, our last quarter, we lost a couple of players throughout the day who are pretty important to us, but we thought we managed that pretty well halfway through the second quarter. Conceding two or three goals late before halftime, then probably the weight of numbers, probably off turnover, they got us on the outside in the last quarter. We couldn’t win a contest in front of the ball, so we weren’t tough enough for long enough really.

You’ve got Yeo, Hurn and Ryan coming back, do you feel in hindsight with those injuries that it really played it into their hands?

Having some players underdone, doesn’t help when you have two injuries, so Liam Ryan, Shannon Hurn, they’re both coming back from four or five, but that’s not an excuse, I don’t think we should dwell on that too much. We couldn’t win a contest in front of the ball late, they played really well, they got us on the outside, midfield depth, we probably didn’t have that in the last quarter and a bit, but got to give a lot of credit to Essendon.

At this stage, what do we know about Tim Kelly and Oscar Allen’s injuries?

TK’s got a medial, and Oscar’s got concussion.

How bad is the medial?

I’m not sure, I haven’t spoken to him about it all, obviously not good enough to come back on. And Ozzie, we’ll find out in the next few days how he’s feeling.

You’re finally getting off the injury front, but now have lost more key players.

Yeah look, there’s no doubt it’s hard to replace the a-graders we have, we lost TK early in the second and we had probably our best period 15, 20 minutes after that. So we really stood up as a collective, I think Ah Chee had to go onball with Jones, then we lost Ozzie and put Brander down back, so I thought we adapted well early in the second, obviously as the game went on we couldn’t sustain the effort.

Are you disappointed you couldn’t get the most out of Naitanui’s dominance in the ruck? He was doing everything right in the midfield.

I think the stoppage numbers were pretty even, but was more, if we got a clearance they got us on the spread, on the return of serve sort of thing, off a clearance win. It was turnovers more than stoppages, but yeah look, we had dominance in the ruck, I thought Nic played really well, didn’t take full advantage of that. We hopefully have a more rounded game than just rely on Nic.

How do you think Yeo went?

Look, he was a bit rusty early, he worked into it, he’ll build his minutes, but we’ve got to manage him for the rest of the year, like I said before the game, so that’s going to be ongoing. He was a bit rusty early but he worked his way into it.

Did you have to change much with those injuries about your plan for him?

No that didn’t change, no. It was less about that and more about sharing the load through the midfield with some players who are forwards. Brander going back. But like I said, that’s part of the game, so that wasn’t great for us, but I wouldn’t use that as an excuse.

Weighing up the height in the team, do you think you’re a little bit too tall?

Edwards went out of the side, and Waterman was his sub, so I’m not sure how much shorter you want us to get. And then we lost Ozzie, so we’re probably the shortest side we’ve had for the year tonight. We like to put pressure on the front half if we can, we went down that path this week, obviously thrown out of whack a bit, but like I said, no excuse.

Twenty-two to six inside 50s in the last quarter, was it effort?

A bit of everything, I think the will to win was there for the most part, but not for the whole part, when the game’s up for grabs. I wasn’t surprised, Essendon, the way they’ve been playing, they were going to have a swing. Then the game was on the line for the last 10 minutes, and we just didn’t do enough to get over the line and they did. And that’s the end of the game really.

Do you expect to be in Sydney next weekend?

We haven’t been told anything, so I’ve heard murmurs we might be heading to Sydney, so got to front up there and lick our wounds. We’ll look at the review, see how we can get better, manage things a little bit differently, and get on with the next game because it’s a long season.