The Wash Up

I'm sitting here feeling pretty optimistic about what we can do. We completely understand, especially the last few weeks, we've been playing with a different team which leads to some cohesion issues. 

When you look at who's not in our team, and even the guys that have come back are a little bit underdone and will get better, and then we have a big group of players who when we look at in isolation we feel really optimistic about the sort of players they're going to be, but as a collective at the moment, it's just proving difficult to play the way we've been accustomed to play. 

It's a strange feeling sitting here really disappointed but once you take a breath, collectively our coaches are thinking this is not a situation where we should be thinking we're going to drop out bundle. We're very, very confident that if we shift a few things and improve in a few areas we'll still be very hard to beat. 

The Potential Ins 

We're really optimistic on Dangerfield, Rohan, De Koning; Mitch Duncan might be a little longer but I'm not exactly sure there. Cam Guthrie is close, but Menegola is going to be a bit longer, Stanley is going to be a bit longer. 

It was good to see Henry and Stengle back. I know they played but Jack Henry hasn't played a game at any level all year. VFL didn't have a game this weekend so I'd almost include them as returning players next week. 

The Bigger Picture

We look at the last few years and think, Holmes is going to be a really good player, Knevitt's looking good, Bruhn's looking good. Ollie Henry is the same age as Tanner Bruhn and him going out really hurt us.

Compare that to when we were at our best last year we weren't saying, 'a 20 year old is out of the team that's going to really effect us structurally', so it's just a bit of an indication as to why we're frustrated, but we're not tearing our hair out.