IT WAS a tough day for Mathew Buck’s Blues, as they were on the wrong end of a fast-starting Essendon at Windy Hill.
Feeling the disappointment of a scoreless half, Buck knows his players will dust themselves off and look to finish the season on a positive.
Here’s what he had to say.
On the first half of the game:
“We’re a disappointed group after that performance, but the first half is probably where our real issue was, there’s no doubt about that.
"We’ll take the learnings from it and look to continue to get better like we’ve always been chasing.
“We were really clear on what aspect of our game wasn’t working. We didn’t need to go searching for answer, we thought our ground ball was off and Essendon’s was right on. We’re really clear no that we need to go after in the second half”.
On what was said to shift momentum:
“It was probably our method and the way we went about it [in the first half]. I can’t question our players’ effort, I thought they tried hard all game to be honest, so it was the method about how we played.
"We had to make some slight adjustments but it wasn’t personnel it was just around some little parts of our game that we needed to get right”.
On the conditions:
“It was a tricky wind, but you could score at both ends [of the ground]. I guess the wind spent a lot of time on one side and if you didn’t execute your skill right, then it was a long way off”.
On moving Harriet Cordner forward in the last quarter:
“It was to try and generate some score, sometimes it is time to throw the magnets around and go for a different look and we threw ‘H’ there and fortunately she hit the board.
On missing experience of Kerryn Peterson and Phoebe McWilliams:
“We probably lacked some experience in our side today, so that was tough in the first half, but to the team’s credit in the second half played really well.
"‘Kez’ and Phoebe are both out with some achilles injuries which are pretty sore, so that’s where they’re both at”.
Looking at the final round:
“I think for us we’ve been really clear on our journey throughout the whole year and what we’ve gone after. Today it's like 'dust yourself off and get on with it for next week' so the ladder has always looked after itself and hasn’t been of our concern."
