The key talking points from Luke Beveridge’s weekly press conference.

Tall forwards

We obviously had a reasonable outing against the Kangaroos – the thing that was pleasing about that game was half our goals came from turnover and half from stoppage. It was a pretty good ratio. Our key forwards were influential in that game. A little bit in all of us is intrigued about how it all plays out.

For the first time since I’ve coached our club, we’ve got depth through there with a roster of guys who can definitely shake up the competition. In that sense for our supporters, it’s really exciting.

If you’re standing next to Sam Darcy or Rory Lobb or if Tim English drifts down and you still have Aaron Naughton and Jamarra to contend with, those 1 v 1s are probably going to need some help. That will be an interesting part of the byplay, how well our forwards can be relevant and isolate.

Pressure forwards

JJ is in and Mitch is in – they’ll provide some of the forward pressure. Laitham is out for a little while still. The role players through there are ever important, we still have the mids that play a little bit of forward time because they have too. Our wings are evolving, we’ve got Oskar Baker and Bailey Williams is spending a lot of time as a winger. Anthony Scott can also do that. We feel they will work together tomorrow night to provide that.

Marcus Bontempelli

If Marcus can play any better than 2021 it would be quite amazing. We all feel responsible for him not winning the Brownlow that year because at the end of that year, our last few games weren’t where they needed to be. Every Brownlow Medallist needs a good team around them. He was still influential at times last year, definitely at the end when he was starting to feel a bit better. If he could get close to it, that would be amazing.

Bailey Smith & Adam Treloar

Adam and Bailey have both had their interruptions – it’s one of the reasons why we had Caleb and Cody running through the midfield, having contingencies in place if those marquee midfielders weren’t available. We exposed some of the boys to centre bounce. Whatever Bailey and Adam do on Saturday, they’ll continue to flourish from there. They’re absolutely ready – there last month has been extremely solid.

Top 4 mentality

Aspirationally every year we want to be the best. I think we’ve always said that, we aim to be, we don’t claim we’re going to be. There has always been a strong belief that we can be, which is a great starting point. I like the fact the players are declaring that’s where we want to head this year and that’s the tick off point. It is the way we all feel. Depends on what unfolds, everyone is after some good fortune with their playing roster and it means a lot in the challenges of 23 rounds. We haven’t been there yet in my time, but the same aspiration has been there every year.