The key talking points from senior coach Luke Beveridge’s round four post-match press conference.

Accuracy

Frustrating is probably the obvious word. The last few weeks we’ve kicked way too many points.

We’re creating many, many opportunities – we could sit here and say ‘it takes some time with the blend and lack of chemistry here and there’, but there were some obvious opportunities skill-wise just breaking down, and decision-making at times.

It’s unfortunate and disappointing that we didn’t capitalise and get a margin early in the game that would’ve helped us.

Result

We were encouraged by the way we were playing for a fair period of the game – even in the third quarter where we were coming again – but some really blatant turnovers were kicked straight to them which ultimately fuelled a Richmond game we’ve seen before.

Credit to Richmond – they persevered and found something in their game with their pressure and their intensity. I thought we were on top of things early though so it’s a shame.

I’m not going to sit here and talk about positives because the end of the game was too disappointing, but there were parts of the game that were well and truly in our favour. That’s important to go into next week - so we have to get that done again - but we’ve got to be better with our forward-half effectiveness.

Form

I’m one not to talk about things too far ahead. The complexion of your status can change pretty quickly in this game. We’ve had an inauspicious start – we’ve won one, but we’ve been in all the other games. In the end this margin was extremely disappointing when you consider what transpired during the game, but there are some things to be encouraged by.

The 23 that’s picked every week, we’ve always needed to be even, but tonight I don’t think the evenness was there. That matters too. There’s always a sense of urgency – everyone wants to win every game – but all we can do is just do our best to get win number two (against North Melbourne).

Alex Keath/backline make-up

He’s going to be out for a few weeks. We’re going to miss him for a little while, but it was good to get Tim O’Brien involved. He had some really good involvements but might want a few others back.

I thought Gardy was pretty good – obviously (Tom) Lynch kicked four in the end, but some of those entries were off pretty blatant forward-half turnovers that they got in their favour and did really well to pressure. Sometimes they’re pretty hard to defend, but I thought our backs worked okay for most of the night.

No. 1 ruck role

Stef Martin has missed a bit of footy in recent times – I thought he played okay for Footscray. Tim (English) has had a good few weeks. I thought he was pretty good again tonight. He’s relishing the opportunity to spend more minutes in the ruck.

Right at this point in time, we plan to keep (him) doing that, but usually you’ve got a couple more key position players to probably have a pinch-hit in the ruck. At the moment because we’re down some of our keys, you sort of have to rely on doing it a different way when Tim has to have a rest. (Richmond) was reasonably tall at either end, so we couldn’t really even afford to take anyone from our back end, Jamarra’s not really ready for the ruck and we need Naughts forward.

Stef was okay (in the VFL) so he might put his hand up to come back in, but we’ll process that during the week.