How big a scare for you was that in the box?
Yes, it was pretty tight wasn’t it? I think it belies the general play dominance and entry dominance. All credit to them, they are a very young team with no (Dion) Prestia, (Gary) Ablett, (David) Swallow to name a couple and (Steven) May it’s a pretty impressive effort by them. As much as we know they are super talented list they’ve still got a number of babies out there and I thought their senior players like (Michael) Rischitelli lead them pretty well. I thought they won the third quarter but I thought the other quarters we probably dominated entry and general play but we couldn’t quite capitalise. It was a difficult day they have numbers back and normally we could man that up a bit better, but we were just a bit worried about the counter punch in the wet because of the accuracy. It made it a bit harder than it should have been but I’m thrilled with our character in the last quarter. At the end of the day we turn into the break 10-1, we get a week off to gather ourselves, the players have five days of R and R and will come back pretty invigorated about the second half of the year.
 
Do you think the players were totally switched on?
I can claim some things but I can’t claim to read minds, so I really don’t know what they were thinking. I can only judge on their action, as I said I thought we were hard enough, we pressured enough and I thought we spread the ball…we probably over finessed a little bit in the conditions. We had double the amount of entries, double the amount of shots, I don’t think they weren’t switched on. Rodney Eade is a very good coach and he’s very good at trying to equal things up when his team’s an underdog. I thought he did that pretty well today and challenged our guys to think a bit and work their way through. It’s really hard in the wet with numbers back on you to thread the ball. If you want to man it up you get pretty vulnerable at the back so it’s a bit of balancing act. To their credit I thought they were super. To answer your question though, based on the actions I saw, bar the third quarter lapse I thought we worked hard, we were hard enough, we had plenty of ball, plenty of entries. But Andrew Ireland, a great Swans man and a great football person, he talks about accuracy as the most underrated stat in football so I think you’d look at that today. In fairness they did force us a bit longer and wider than we should have been.
 
10 – 1 in the bye, does that exceeded the expectations at the start of the season?
I never set win and loss, I just try and play our best footy. We’ve got plenty of improvement in us, there’s no doubt about that, you’re going to need to improve. In my view we’re all chasing Hawthorn still, their percentage tells you, and their scoring and player availability just tells you. I think they’ve had three lapses that have maybe cost them three games so they could easily be at one loss. I still think they are the best team in the competition, we’re all chasing them. Fortunately we have made the most of our opportunities, it gives us a bit of breathing space and again we’re going to have to get going again. We’ve got Collingwood after the bye, a really big challenge, but one we are excited about. We walk away with some frustrations today, but they would have been greater if the scare had of come true and we would have lost, but it didn’t.
 
You’ve had a few wet and fairly big sloggings in the wet, are the boys tired?
No, we had a great week on the track, certainly three games in a row have been slippery and wet, a bit more collision in them. We used to be a very good wet weather team, we have changed our style of play so maybe that’s affecting us a little bit, but we are going to have to find the formula a little bit better than we did today.

Have your tall forwards been an issue in the wet conditions?
I think that would be fair to say. We are a taller front half this year. Chris Mayne used to be our third tall, so then when (Zac) Clarke or (Jack) Hannath goes in the ruck and (Aaron) Sandilands comes off it was really just Mayne and (Matthew) Pavlich. But now we are taller. Hannath, (Matt) Taberner and really Matthew has been subbed out a couple of times. It's something we’ll have to look at. But I think if you’re good enough we just work our way through it. I think when (Nat) Fyfe went forward he really impacted after half-time. I think our forwards have just got to get a bit better at winning some of their own ball.

Can you comment on your inclusions that we haven’t seen much of, Tendai Mzungu, Alex Pearce and Jack Hannath?
I’m not here to do individual assessment. I’m happy to talk about the team. I think it would be unfair. I’m not great at judging all of the individuals. I think you saw the game and I’m (ok) for you to proffer your opinion forward. I think I’d need to gather all the facts before I shoot from the hip. I don’t think anyone was terrible, I don’t think anyone was great. It was just a thereabouts game for a lot of people.

How do you spend the break now?
They’ve got five days R and R. That’s ok. We love to give them a break. They’ve earned it. We trust them to go away and enjoy themselves, we don’t want to be Chihuahuas. They know that, I know that. Represent your club in the way we expect and see you fresh and fit and ready to go.

Was that generally a step forward from last week?
We love winning. We’ll take four points over zero, I reckon.

What was the inaccuracy down to?
I’d have to review them, but we spoke about some shallow marks, some wide marks, so we probably needed a bit more penetration. I don’t think we missed too many sitters. So all credit to their defence really.