The Dangerfield Substitution

I had a quick chat to him and our medical staff, and it appears to me, and this is always dangerous to say, it's not serious. 

It seems a little confusing in some ways, but subbed off with a hamstring, it's not great news, so hopefully the damage can be mitigated there, and he doesn't miss too much but I would be clear if it was a really serious one, which was our fear because he was subbed off pretty quickly. 

But that wasn't an indication of the severity it was more, 'there's something there and not something that we should take a risk with', so don't muck around getting Ollie Dempsey into the game. 

Esava Ratugolea’s Continued Development 

I don't want it to sound like a victory lap, but I've always had confidence in Esava and if it were only my decision there is no way the conversation would have ever been entertained, he wasn't leaving, and that wasn't solely because it was the best thing for Geelong, I thought it was the best thing for him and I was really confident an opportunity would open up.

So, if you fast forward to today, you don't have Jack Henry, you don't have Sam De Koning, if we didn't have Ratugolea we would have been in real trouble.

I always struggle to work out straight after the game who the most influential players were, I take my time to work through that, because that's not my main priority watching the game, but wow, he took my eye. 

Generation Next

When the game was on the line late, we were so impressed with Mitch Knevitt and Tanner Bruhn, Esava, he speaks for himself a little bit.

We had some crucial centre bounces late in the game and it was Atkins, and Knevitt and Bruhn, and it was exciting for us. It's not necessarily by design but.. it's easy to say when you've won but even if we didn't, the silver lining when you have a bit of an injury list to key players is that you see others come through and I think that's happening around the competition. 

Max Holmes

We've got a lot of faith in Max, and he's still a developing player, but even late last year he was a really important player for us and it's just exciting when you group those guys together, if you're a Geelong fan then you can think, 'I've got bit of an idea of what it might look like in four or five years’ time', and you look at them today and you think, 'we might be ok'. 

The Season So Far

We go into most games expecting it to be a grind, and if we're surprised on the upside then we take that but when we watched them we didn't think, if we just get our game right we'll kick five or six and the game will be over early.

We knew they'd keep coming, they're an attacking threat, been good around the midfield and their defence, if you don't know them well you will soon. It was more stressful than the last couple of weeks but there's more to come. I think the last couple of weeks will be the anomaly, not today.