BEING RELIABLE over being remarkable.
That was the message across the board from Daniel Harford leading into the Round 7 clash, and that's what his Game Changers delivered on Saturday afternoon.
Recording their first home win of the season, the Blues kept an opposition scoreless for the first time in their history, running away with an emphatic 46-point victory.
On singing the song for the first time in five weeks:
It was really good. It’s been a while coming, about a month coming for the players. To see them celebrate victory and have the joy in their face from playing a pretty impressive four-quarter performance was lovely. It’s been a while coming, so it was nice to sing the song for the first time in a while.
On keeping the opposition goalless for four quarters:
We haven’t keep a team goalless in my time here, certainly not for a long time. It’s a big effort in any game of footy, particularly at this level because there’s real quality in every opposition team that you come up against.
It wasn’t so much a focus: it was more on the contest and winning more of those than we lost. That gave us a chance to give us field advantage and make it a bit harder for the Saints to get back to goal.
On sharing the load with ball in hand:
That was a focus coming in, to share the load and not rely on individuals to be remarkable. It was more about a lot of us being reliable. That sung true through the journey today. Everyone got the reward, everyone got a lick of the ice cream is what I say.
They worked together, they shared the ball around and we had good results on the back of that. That was a really pleasing aspect as it was one of our themes, and one of the results we got.
On the performances of Darcy Vescio and Brea Moody:
I thought ‘Darce’ worked really well: their one-on-one stuff was brilliant and when the ball hits the deck, they’re so tough to defend. They’re so clean and so agile.
‘Moods’ was brilliant pushing forward. We want our targets to have a bit more presence going forward, so doing that and kicking some snags is good for her and good for us. Our forward line spread and mixed all the way through.
On backing up next week against GWS:
That’s the challenge. We’ve had games of a half in the last three weeks: we’ve started the first pretty well but fallen away in the second half. Today we were able to maintain that for the four quarters. That’s the next challenge: while one week is fantastic, two weeks is going to be even better.
