Give us your thoughts?

Obviously disappointing to lose, I thought we had good supply, especially in the first half, probably didn’t make the most of our chances, really. We knew what North was going to bring and we knew they’ve been showing real grit all year, last four weeks in particular it’s lasted longer, so we sort of knew it was coming. Inability to convert in the first half, we had a poor third quarter, and then when we hit the lead in the last we couldn’t keep it in our front half. We’re disappointed, we’re low on confidence, that’s definitely something. The effort was better this week. But not making the most of opportunities, North have played a really good brand tonight, they played good footy and we’re not good enough.

Being low on confidence, how’s that playing itself out on-field?

Look, I suppose decision making, some unforced errors that we don’t usually make. Taking the game on a little bit more, we’ve been trying to do that. Some hesitation with that or a skill turnover, hurts you, so next time you get it you’re more hesitant. So, we’ve got to work through it, it’s football, it happens, you get down on form. Send you down the street, buy some confidence, it’s pretty hard to do that. So got to keep training hard, and we need to look at the side, see if we can mix it up a little bit going forward, try and get players to perform better for longer.

Now that you’ve lost to the bottom team how do you judge your team?

Like I said, there were periods there where we had dominance, we didn’t make the most of it, we’re low on confidence, so there was better signs this week than last week, although we played a side at home we should beat, and we didn’t. We need to own that of course and we need to stick together.

What levers do you need to pull apart from the selection side of things?

We need to review the game, look at the vision, see where we can get better. We’ll look at all those things throughout the week, it starts tomorrow morning when we review the game. I still think there’s a bit more to give. Our best players probably aren’t playing their best footy, and their talent hasn’t gone, so we’re going to keep working on that. We’re not going to give players free rides and we need to give some opportunities to our youth as well, but yeah, they’re still good players, effort tonight was better, work rate was better, but we still need got exposed at stages as well.

How do you go about getting confidence now and what processes do you put in place?

Well, we’ve got to be consistent, so we can’t chop and change, and we’ve pivoted this week, did a few different things, and now we’ll stick to it, so train hard, be honest, select the right team and continue to grow, and hopefully it turns.

You’ve made some changes and you’ve spoken about trying to settle the team, how do you balance that up knowing there are some changes you need to make now?

Yeah I think we’ve made 16 or 17 changes in three weeks which doesn’t help, some have been form and some have been injuries. So we can’t keep doing that. We need to get the balance right with our players and try and be consistent with selection as well, we need to look at players who are down on form and what we can do to help them get back into form, because they’re too good to stay low for that long.

What happened to Elliot Yeo?

I think he rolled his ankle a couple of times in the last, so he had ice on his ankle after the game.

Can you rule out that he’s hurt his groin?

He had ice on his ankle, not on his groin I suppose, see how he pulls up. It’s always how you pull up 24 hours later with a groin.

What about the team you’re putting on paper versus the output?

I think it’s understandable that we’re all frustrated, on paper we look good, performance-wise, we’re not. So, that’s our challenge, that’s the players’ challenge, that’s ours to try and get better. So, there’s no magic wand or dust I can sprinkle, we’ve just got to work hard, show the good stuff, be honest with the bad stuff.

How do you address the discipline from tonight?

Look it's frustration creeping into the game, we don’t like it, it hurts us, when the game is tight like it was tonight we just missed opportunities in front of goal, we missed some opportunities with some undisciplined free kicks, so we need to address that.

Feels like you’re looking to drag them up, you know they’re low on confidence and you’re trying to improve it?

I don’t think I need to be critical right now I think you guys will take care of that, so we’ve got to stick together, I’ve got their backs, we’re part of the solution as well as being honest with them. So we’re not going around thinking we’re going well at all, but we’ve got to stick together and that’s our whole list, so we’ll look at everything, what we do. But we do need to be consistent.

How do you handle the media aftermath after a performance like that?

Stick to process, and like I said, we did a couple of different things that we showed on the field tonight that were positive and there were some things that weren’t positive, so consistency is what I’m looking for this week and hopefully our performance gets better.

Who do you feel like are in some form that will be able to lead this resurgence with confidence?

WAFL Eagles has performed a lot better the past few weeks, we went down on the weekend late, but they’re playing a better brand, there’s more availability, albeit we’ve lost a few soldiers the last 10 days or so. So, we’ll look at that, give opportunities like we did, I think the Carlton game in Sydney, we got some real growth and spirit with the younger players playing, so we need to look at that as well and give opportunities to kids who deserve it.