What’s your feeling after that performance today?
Disappointing to lose, obviously we’ve been playing some good footy and didn’t play well today. Brisbane were really good, they had every right to be a bit flat after two six day breaks and travel so absolute credit to them for the energy they brought and played. We didn’t bring the energy to match so that was the main disappointing factor of the game.

You fumbled a bit at times was that Brisbane’s pressure or your girls?
A bit of both. We sort of saw this coming to be honest. We trained really poorly during the week and we sort of sparked up a little bit Thursday night but it still wasn’t our usual level so there was a bit of that. You talk about the pressure, we normally out tackle our opposition every quarter, even last week when it was a so called easy win, we out pressured every quarter. We only won one quarter today with the tackles and that was the second quarter when we did dominate play. So we were off in our pressure and Brisbane’s pressure was good and we definitely didn’t handle it today.

What was behind the lack lustre training session during the week?
If I could really pin point that… I think every coach knows it sometimes and you try to change but I think we have obviously been up for a while, the travel when we went away and we thought we were going away for two weeks and that changed, we had a couple of really good performances to get Adelaide and last week. I think it was just a bit of mental fatigue, there was no reason for physical fatigue, but today was probably exactly what we needed to sharpen up that mindset and get ready for the second half of the year.

Outside of the Adelaide game, you’ve scored more behinds than goals. Is that something you’ve got to look at?
Yes and no. Against Adelaide we could score seven goals one because our attacks were starting from the back half and then you’d get in where you’ve got space so you get easier shots. Today the quarter that we dominated was the second quarter, they had numbers back, there was a lot of players down there and we couldn’t quite get a shot to go through. But, if you score a point in AFLW I think you’re about 80 per cent more likely to score the next score than the opposition and that’s what happens, it gets stuck down there but it’s harder to score a goal because there’s so many numbers, and they’re kicking out wide and that’s just the nature of it. So you’ll see it happen quite a lot, what you have to do is when you get those clean chances you’ve got to take those. We probably had a couple in the first quarter where we got moving with some nice space and missed those, they hurt you more than the second quarter when, if you look back we didn’t too miss easy shots, we hit the post a couple of times, they were all pretty rushed from where they were. Sure, occasionally one of those goes through, you saw last week Roxy Roux kicks an amazing banana goal and things happen, today Courtney Hodder who is a special young talent, she did it aswell and it makes a difference when you do get one through but you can’t rely on that.

03:38

What was your message to the players to make sure they sharpen up?
We just talked about our mindset. There’s a couple of things we could have done better in terms of our ball movement, we sort of didn’t play the way with the ball that we wanted to to today, but really all that comes second to the mindset so we have to go back and make sure that we get that relentless pressure into our game. Like I said, it’s not ideal to lose, but it’s the perfect time to happen, we’re 4 and 1 just past the half way point and we can reset and come hard in the second half of the year.

It was a great winning streak – how do you reflect on that?
It’s something we don’t talk about internally. We’ve got the ultimate goal and we’d be quite happy if we went 6 and 3 and then got through and did everything from there – that would be more important to us. It’s probably nice to have it because it gives you confidence that you can win from anywhere. Today we could have got away with it if we had scored at the start of the last quarter but it’s a good lesson to learn. It was a great streak to go through but at the end of the day we don’t have anything to show for that so we just want to keep going on and make sure that we first of all make finals and then finish as high as we can on the ladder to give ourselves the best chance.

How did you finish up injury wise?
I think we are ok.

Were there any Freo players that you feel kept you in the game?
I thought Matilda Sergeant’s game was outstanding today. She played on Dakota Davidson, so she was giving away a good 12 to 13 cms, kilos and speed aswell and the job that she did all day was phenomenal. I thought our backs did stand up again. Laura Pugh was really good with her rebound, Kiara (Bowers) was Kiara, I think she had 24 touches and seven tackles so just did her thing. I thought our forwards overall were quite poor and I thought Gemma Houghton was one who kept battling, (Kate) Lutkins is an absolute gun and I thought it was a really good battle but Gemma probably didn’t get enough and I thought that was the big stat for us, forward 50 tackles, we had six for the day and they had 20 and that’s from the same number of inside 50s. That’s normally the other way around for us so that was a crucial part of the outcome and it’s something we will definitely address and review this week.

01:50

They set up well in defence with that wall so you couldn’t come over the top. Are you worried about other teams learning from this going forward?
Yes and no. I’m worried about us not learning from it. (Sophie) Conway went back and played as a goal keeper so she was a wing, which left us with a wing free and we just didn’t use that wing. We wanted to, but the players just couldn’t execute that to get to the wing and change the angle. If we did that a couple of times they’d probably have to change what they do. But we couldn’t do that so I’m more worried about us learning how to cope with that than other sides doing it to us because, in that second quarter if we had played smarter, we could have bypassed her, because she did a great job down there, and still be able to score.

With so many great leaders and a great culture do you leave it to the players this week to try and turn it around?
We spoke then about how we’ve had a negative mindset from early on in the week which shouldn’t happen when you’re four and zero. We got in the same spot last year, in the same situation, but we just managed to eke out a couple of wins and then it turned positive. So I think we’ll have a couple of days away from each other now, which is good we can give them a couple of days off to freshen up and then get ready to come back and attack.  Like you said we’ve got some really good leaders and I think they could do with a couple of days to freshen up themselves and then launch into the second half of the season with a positive attitude.