Luke Beveridge addressed the big talking points ahead of Saturday night’s match against Richmond.
The unchanged team…
We came out of that came fairly encouraged by some of the good things, but we’ve just been working on the phases that need a little bit more of a sheen on it.
We weren’t far away from beating Fremantle on their home deck, who had been pretty good the week before against a good GWS side.
The VFL Footscray team had a tough day at Williamstown last week, there were a couple of players who were putting pressure on for spots prior to that and they’ll get their chance – we’ll need to reward that at some point.
Our VFL side play Casey out there on Sunday, so I think some of the players in the AFL team are definitely feeling some pressure to play well, so we hope that can amount to victories.”
Team consistency…
The KPIs around opportunity paint a good picture for us, but we don’t capitalise on them. That’s our endeavour, to make sure we do. We’ve been a team for a long time who believes we’ve got a pretty good system – creates enough chances and defends pretty well as a group – but if you’re not taking them and hitting the scoreboard, it comes back to bite you.
Is that a positive? I think it is, in the way that we haven’t got any concerns with our players really applying themselves and doing their best in a team environment, we just have to be better with the ball and use our leg speed in the right manner to get us into space.
Aaron Naughton…
He’s only going back if we play a ruckman out of our backline, which we did last week, so he went down there to relieve.
Aaron might head back occasionally, dependent on the momentum of the game, but we’re seeing enough to understand that not only now but, in the future, he’s going to be really important to us as a forward. He’s got all the attributes.
He’ll apply himself again this week, he’ll start up forward and no doubt he’ll be cleaner with his hands and he’ll have opportunities and hopefully we can capitalise on some of his good play.
The opposition…
They have a similar configuration or composition in their team to what we have, they’re not a tall side and have lost some experienced players.
It’s been impressive to see how some of their younger players have come in and performed, so that’s encouraging for them.
They’ve got lots of those nippy forwards who can cause you some headaches, so we’ll need to play a strong defensive game at ground level on those players.
Dale Morris
Hopefully a couple of weeks after the bye, Dale might be available to play footy again.
It’s a fascinating journey the last two years for him, he’s just the ultimate professional. The thing is when you’re conditioning yourself when you can’t run, it’s all upper body so he’s essentially turned into Thor now.
It’s great, he’s such an important character around our workplace.
