What was going through your mind when you saw Max King kicking all of those goals?

Spoil it, don’t try and mark it was what I was thinking with the backs. But, look he’s a very good player, played very well tonight. We looked tired in that last quarter, two six day breaks, but we hung on. And the way that St Kilda play, their brand, is so aggressive that they’re always in the hunt. So I thought we held on pretty well in the first half, got some really good dominance with our ball movement and stoppage work. As the game went on, we didn’t use the ball as well and they looked really damaging off the turnover, so we hung on, and we live to fight another day.

How proud are you?

They showed good resilience today, and so did St Kilda. Both of us have had bad patches this year, and we scouted them in the last month as good as any, the way they play, they’re probably number one or two in defence at the moment, and they’re building. So we thought we were a bit behind them in terms of best football, but today we were really pleased, we fought it out and hung on.

Your aggression with your ball movement and speed was really significant, was that something you were happy with?

Yeah definitely, it’s never not been there, perhaps we haven’t looked for it as much. You can’t define your game off your ball movement, you need to get the contest right, and I think the last three weeks we’ve got better and better, in our work rate and effort. They’re the pillars. We did have opportunities today to move the ball a bit quicker and we took it, in particular the first half, but it did dry up in the last quarter and a half. But the ball movement was back to somewhere near our best.

The move of Jeremy McGovern to the ruck, how did you see it?

Well he looked like Polly Farmer in the first quarter, then he blew up, he did it for three stints throughout the game. Yeah look, it’s something that we’re exploring, we think we’re probably playing Oscar Allen out of position at stages if he’s going to second ruck. But we play another ruckman, we’re probably too tall, so we’re just looking and exploring different ways to go about it. So ‘Gov’ did it today, had pretty good success early, ‘Ossie’ did his thing late, but yeah, there’s some of the things we’re trying.

Do you think taking McGovern from his position in the back line allowed King to get those touches?

I’m not quite sure if that was a factor, maybe one or two goals when ‘Gov’ was in the ruck. Young Harry Edwards played his fifth or six game and I thought he held him pretty well for the first half. I think he kicked a couple, but the supply that they got and his reach was just really hard to defend. I don’t think it was because ‘Gov’ was playing in the ruck, I think he just won some really good contested marks and perhaps if ‘Gov’ had been back for one or two of them he might’ve been able to stop it, but he probably rucked for 15 minutes for the whole game, really.

Jack Darling’s three goals and Jamie Cripps’ last two weeks, do you feel like you’ve been rewarded for the faith you’ve had in some of your senior players?

I’ve never lost faith in our players, and they’ve held up pretty well over the years, especially some of our senior players, so that hasn’t been an issue for us internally, we’ve always backed them in. I thought today there was little periods of players who just dominated for us at stages. Tim Kelly’s second quarter, I think Nic (Naitanui) for most of the day, Darling, (Josh) Kennedy, (Shannon) Hurn doing some really good things down back, ‘Gov’ had his moments. So our leaders, I thought, were really resilient, Dom Sheed standing up in the second half, and ‘Yeoy’ (Elliot Yeo) looks like he’s back to his best, so while we did all that, we obviously tip our hat to the Saints, and what they were doing as well, they never gave up either.

Does it feel like a momentum build-up, the win?

I’m not quite sure. I haven’t reflected on it too much. It’s four points, it gets us in the eight still, we’ve got a big game against Collingwood next week, so it looks like we’re up for the fight, that’s what it looks like. And that’s the first piece.

How did you address not having captain Luke Shuey in the mix?

Unfortunately it’s probably what we’ve been used to really, with Luke not being around, so they’ve just got to step up. ‘Hutch’ (Mark Hutchings) came in for his first game for a while, we lost Liam (Ryan) with what looks like a mid-sized hamstring. So, (Jarrod) Brander came on, so we looked quite young there at stages with (Xavier) O’Neill and (Connor) West, and Harry Edwards and Brander, so we’re still exploring that, our younger players. But our midfield looks like it balanced themselves out pretty well.

Ryan almost looks like he did the damage while celebrating?

Did he? I couldn’t tell you, maybe he realised it afterwards. He’s not normally a massive celebrator, so did he do a cartwheel or something, did he?

Do you know how many weeks?

Early stages, they said it’s not terrible, but it sounds like it might just be your standard hamstring, but until we get the scan, I’m just guessing.

Tim Kelly went off in the third, do you know what happened?

I think he just got his knee checked out that he hurt a while ago, so to finish off the game probably tells us he’s going to be fine.

What are the emotions for you when you see more players injured?

It is hard to get off that hamster wheel when you’re starting to get players returning, and then you lose a couple, and then the match fitness and synergy and connectivity with our group just hasn’t been as pure as perhaps it has been in the past, but we’re not alone, a lot of clubs go through it. It’s just really hard to get out of it, you need to have two or three weeks of no injuries to get everyone up to speed, and we just haven’t seemed to be able to do that. But that’s the game, we need to keep fighting on, gives great exposure for our younger players, and if we can keep winning, hopefully we can get everyone back towards the end of the year.

Just bad luck with all the soft tissue injuries?

We’ve got to look into it, we had a double six day break this week, with the pre-season, a lot of our key position players or a-graders had significant time off in the off-season, so they come back midseason, I think it’s harder than ever to come back from a long-term injury and hit the ground running, so we’ve got to look at all that, probably at the end of the year.