“WE played with a real sense of confidence and went forward and scored: I guess everything clicked in a sense.”
Tough conversations and a desire to improve: that’s what went on inside the four walls at IKON Park in the lead up to Carlton’s victory over Adelaide on Sunday night.
Reflecting on the challenges of the 2021 season on SEN on Wednesday morning, Jacob Weitering was pleased with the Round 15 result while conceding there’s work still to be done to achieve greater consistency in his side’s performances.
“It was definitely a very physical and tough game. Coming off the bye, we didn’t get the result we wanted against GWS. It was a tough pill to swallow that game, and we looked at it pretty harshly inside the four walls,” Weitering said.
“We had a really good week on the track and looking back on the game, our second quarter was something that we really loved.
"There were some really positive signs to take out of it, but it wasn’t the cleanest game. We would’ve liked to have finished a little bit more and they still kicked a few goals a little bit easier than we would’ve liked.”
The defensive unit a key focus of the last month of football, Weitering is confident that keeping the Crows to 73 points on Sunday is a step in the right direction.
“It’s game by game. For us, it’s been a bit of a pattern. At the end of the day, every AFL game is full of mistakes and teams do get run ons. For us, the run ons aren’t typically two or three goals in the opposition’s direction: it becomes four, five, six or seven goals,” he said.
“That’s something we’ve had to address in the last few weeks. Our defence has been quite the topic of conversation and playing together.
“That’s something we did work on in the last two weeks and it showed on the weekend, the way we were able to defend together. Liam and I were able to intercept and get the reward off that, but that’s the pressure we build off the back of forward-50 tackles, that’s the team working as one. It’s something we haven’t done consistently and game by game.”
A second-year leader for the Blues, Weitering reflected on the challenges of building a cohesive leadership structure for success in the years ahead.
A young voice in that group, it’s all about building internal relationships in spite of external commentary on performance.
“It’s certainly been challenging because of the ups and downs. I’d be lying and I have said it before, but you do hear the outside noise,” he said.
“You turn on Facebook and an article is straight there and you just read the headline and you either get positive or negative feelings towards it.
“This group is a resilient group and I know that might be an interesting statement and again we haven’t had the wins that we wanted this year.
“We obviously want to be in the finals hunt and we’re only two games out still, so anything can happen in the back half of the year. This group is really close, the relationships are really strong and I guess the response you saw on the weekend is something that we have to continually do and do it consistently.”
