THE MORNING after last night's loss to Sydney, defender and vice-co captain Jacob Weitering spoke to the media at Sydney Airport as the team returned to Melbourne.
Speaking on their inability to convert on the scoreboard, their focus moving forward and their responsibility as a playing group, here's what he had to say.
On different areas of their game failing to stand up:
"There’s definitely an element of frustration for sure. It tends to be - in the last month or so - it’s been something different each week.
"I look at our first half as a real positive, just with the way we played, the way we defended, the way we cracked in and it was as simple as putting goals on the board which we weren’t able to do last night.
On the forward group's performance:
"We didn’t kick straight last night. I thought our first half was really positive – probably the best half of defence that I think we’ve played in terms of the trust and connection.
"I thought the boys really cracked in – we can probably be more efficient going inside 50, we’ve got some tall timber in there and getting some more marks inside 50 is ideal, then we get some more quality shots."
"We know that the boys down there – Charlie [Curnow], Harry [McKay], TDK [De Koning] and all the forwards are working bloody hard each week on their craft and goal kicking is certainly a part of that.
"We back them in 100 per cent of the time and unfortunately, they couldn’t get their job done in their department and we own that as a group, it’s as simple as that."
On player ownership:
"There’s an element of player ownership that we need to take, especially off the back of last night – it was pretty disappointing as a group and we’re pretty connected as a group and that’s probably where the frustration continues to grow.
"We didn’t get the job done on the night and 'Vossy' and the coaches are doing a terrific job at giving us the education that we need and what we need to improve and what we’re doing well.
"We’ll stick together, review it on Monday and look to go pretty hard against an in-form Melbourne side."
On the frustration of the fans:
"We certainly share the frustration with the fans and it's always tough when we produce a result like we did last night when we simply didn’t kick straight and didn’t win the game.
"We’ve got to keep putting our heads down, bums up and working as hard as we can to put four points on the board."
On the next month of football:
"The next month is certainly important heading into the bye, we’ve got three games left but Melbourne is our next challenge and that’s what we're going to focus on.
"They’re a quality side with quality players. We’ve got some injuries now and we’ve got to have that 'next-man up' mentality and get the job done."
