You came in with good form. What went wrong in the first quarter?
From our end everything went wrong, but Collingwood made that happen. It boiled down to two simple points.  Our midfield got obliterated and didn’t compete in the manner we expect around the ball. It started with the ruck work, I thought we got dominated there, we had to send another big man to help. Our poor positioning of bodywork gave a field position and then when we won the ball back….I thought we defended well early. Our ability to adapt or to desire to adapt to the conditions, surge the ball, take some ground, we were fiddling around with the ball and hand balling one-to-one when we should have kicked. Ultimately that is what we have trained. We didn’t want that to occur. Centre back stoppages we got annihilated, ruck work and first possession. That is about competing at all levels.  And then when we did get the ball, there were times when we were in reasonable positions to take one-on-one…and we finessed and they turned it over and scored. We looked at the guys at half-time and they looked pristine and we set it up. It wasn’t animated at half time, we said, we’ve got a bit of a hole and we need to work our way through it. At half time we set it up to compete and were pretty much accountable all over the ground. I thought we turned it around in the third quarter and we were a chance. We could have been a couple of goals closer.  We slaughtered the ball a bit at attacking mid. We said lets swing the club and have a go. But, the true form of the game came out and they won the clearances and turned the ball over on us. They found lots of space and we couldn’t find any. That was the size of it I think. We are disappointed.
 
You’ve had a few good performances the last few weeks. Was this a step backwards?
I think that is obvious. It’s a step back. Really disappointed, Friday night footy at the MCG and we had spoken about that. We have plenty of members and fans and we are on a national stage. We like our young players and our leaders to step up but that didn’t occur. Flabbergasted in some respects. I never separate myself. Clearly there is somewhere in our preparation that allowed that to happen and I am responsible along with my coaching staff. Like last week we don’t take all the credit, and we don’t take all the blame. They are a club under siege obviously, with Eddie (McGuire) being put through the ringer. They seem to be galvanized and responded in a manner that we would like to see ourselves respond in.
 
You talk about clean uniforms at half-time in the conditions. Are you saying you didn’t have a crack?
What I am saying is we were non-competitive in the first half. You can put whatever consonants and vowels and string them all together and make whatever words you want, but at the end of the day we didn’t compete fiercely around the ball. The other team got to work around the coal face and walked out of stoppages. I really I think our guys tried in the ruck but the other guys were better than them.
 
Were there any warning signs pre-game about the lack of competitiveness in the first half?
No.

We didn't compete strongly enough: Mundy
 
What sort of response can we expect? What do you want to see from your side?
I think we all know what we would like to see. It was most pleasing against Port, our competitiveness and our attack on the ball and the man. And that’s what we would like to see. We have the break now and then we go to Darwin, and then we have Geelong at home. There are some valuable lessons to be learnt, and they are only lessons if you learn from them. I sit here really disappointed and so do my players. There is no yelling…we just feel we have let ourselves down. We have made some progress, but again for Blakely, Weller and Tucker you cant buy that experience. You’ve got to go through that. We are understanding of that. I thought the senior players last week really stood up for them. But today they didn’t lead like they have been leading. So that makes it difficult.  
 
How restricting is it being down to 28-29 players?
We certainly have some challenges with that. Hopefully we didn’t lose any tonight. There are bits and pieces and it is significant there is no shying away from that. We will work our way through that. We didn’t talk about it after the game last week. All clubs have their challenge and it is significant. We aim to get one or two back after the bye. We didn’t play our emergencies and we wont fly them back because we can’t risk them getting hurt. We only have 25/26 (players) to pick from. That’s life.
 
One of your youngsters Sam Collins stood up tonight. Can you tell us a bit about him?
His background is Box Hill, 22-year-old key defender. He has earned an opportunity, without (Michael) Johnson and (Alex) Pearce playing. I thought he competed really well. He took some opportunities. I thought his roll off stoppages was good. He is still working on his bodywork against some bigger players. There were some good signs there for a young player who is relatively inexperienced.
 
Will the current injured players come straight back in to the AFL?
I think on tonight (Jon) Griffin will come straight back in as an available ruckman. I think that is a no brainer without being disrespectful to anyone. (Ethan) Hughes is a young player that we had in and would like to give him another opportunity to succeed and not throw him under the bus. He will go back to Peel and hopefully force his way back in. (Shane) Yarran is starting to build so hopefully in two or three weeks. He will play tomorrow and we can have a good look at him.

Talking points after Collingwood loss
 
Is Neale ok? Looked like he had a bit of a shoulder?
I think it was just a stinger, I thought he was down tonight and not at his best. I thought Walters went into the mid-field after half time and really lit us up in there and turned it around. I thought Hill’s second half he started to move.
 
And Barlow?
I thought (Steele) Sidebottom got the better of him.
 
Where’s Zac Clarke at at the moment? He has copped a fair bit of cristicm.
Well we all get criticism. He would be disappointed. He wasn’t at his best, but as I said, I don’t think our guys come to get beaten. It’s a competitive jungle and I thought his second half was better. I think both him and Jack (Hannath) would walk away and say we didn’t execute our role.  I think objectively we could all say that. But did they mean to get beaten? No.
 
Is that the most frustrating night sitting in the box this year?
Yes, it was disappointing we came here with higher expectations than we delivered on.
 
Are you attending the meeting with Gillon McLachlan this weekend?
I would like to be there. Gillion is doing a wonderful job but I have to get back to Perth and conduct our review, unfortunately.