The key talking points from Luke Beveridge’s weekly press conference.

GWS review

As we saw last week against GWS, it doesn’t really matter too much as to where teams are on the ladder – with a tenacious drive to continue to win at all costs, it doesn’t matter where you are or what it means in the bigger scheme of things.

Ultimately, a team like the Hawks who are going to finish their year definitely, will want to finish on a good note. We know they’re going to throw everything at us.

That’s why I was pleased last week – I was impressed with GWS’ contest and how hard they worked definitely stifled parts of our game. They played ‘keepings off’ for a fair bit of it and stuck to that task, but I was just really pleased at how we persevered. It was only five points, but gives us a look at another game where if we win, who knows what could happen.

Hawthorn preview

Their planning at the moment is around troubling sides with where they think opposition sides are quite vulnerable while playing to their strengths. They’ve won some games in the back part of the year, and even in our game earlier on (in round 15), that was in the balance for a long period of time. We didn’t control it but ultimately had a margin in the end. They’re extremely competitive.

Possibility of playing finals

In simple terms, the best way to prepare is just to focus on our challenge and winning the game against Hawthorn. We haven’t played them down there too many times over the years, but I don’t think we’ve ever beaten them down there – not in my time anyway.

We’ll confront that challenge first off, and try not to get too caught up in the peripheral aspect of what could happen post – that’s really the only way to approach it. We know what we need to rely on if we win, so if we get there, we’ll be pretty nervous about (other results).

Player availability

Marcus Bontempelli will play. He’s probably better this week than he was last week. He’s had some niggles throughout the course of the year but just grits his teeth and applies himself for the team. He shows tremendous leadership week-to-week. He’ll be really prepared for Sunday – the extra day is helpful as well.

Josh Bruce is likely (to come back in) – with our Footscray team having a bye, we thought it was a good opportunity to give him a spell and freshen him up a little bit. We’ll make the decisions on selection over the course of the day, but he’s definitely more than likely to come back in.