On the win against Brisbane…

“There’s a belief within the corridors here that we can progress and be a better team. 

“It didn’t surprise me, but we set out on our pre-season journey with the objective in mind to beat Brisbane and be well prepared for it. 

“I think it’s just validation, definitely for our players and all of our staff who’ve worked with them, that we’ve made some inroads. It’s only one game though, so now we reset for our challenge against the Giants. 

“Recalibrate’s probably an apt word when you think you can’t get carried away with it – you (have to) come back down to Earth and realise the next challenge is going to  take as much energy.

“I think we can feed off the emotion and the connectivity of the whole thing, coming closer together, the selfless nature of the sacrifice – especially the way we played the game out.

“That’s a healthy sign in the conditions as well. It’s pretty stifling from a humidity point of view, so that gives us an element of confidence going into our first game at Marvel this year.”

On the rest of the competition…

“I usually say at this time of the year, regardless of whether you’re playing last year’s premiers or last year’s wooden-spooners – you haven’t got a real gauge on who are going to be the teams who start to rise or maybe fall, or even stagnate. 

“From our point of view, there’s still a lot of uncertainty. I get that externally there’ll be some noise and language around the fact that we’ve beaten Brisbane, but we just need to stay in our tent on that and keep trying to do the things that we’ve really focused on improving on.

“There are definitely things that came out of the (Brisbane) game that we will go to work on tomorrow against the Giants.”

On Will Lewis debuting…

“He’s had a lot of injury in the early days of playing here with us at Footscray, so he’s worked through that with a diligence. 

“Will’s an engineer, so he works long hours to fit that into playing state-league footy and committing yourself to a program – that takes a lot of devotion and sacrifice. 

“He’s another great story of a young man in his mid-twenties who’s created an opportunity for himself by seeing it out. 

“We’ve seen real improvement in his game over the last couple of years.”

On the Giants…

“Our battles have always I suppose drawn in some of our recent history, and so the ancestry attached to that with the playing groups evolve over time. 

“How much passion there is for a rivalry depends on how much you pick it up – I think it’s been there over the journey and what we’re seeing with the Giants now, even last week…is that they spread the load. 

“I thought strategically they were very good and they’ve still got a really potent forward line and a sturdy back-end. 

“They’ve had an injury or two through their midfield, but they were really disciplined with that last week, so we’re expecting them to produce the same and put us on edge in the pressure stakes. 

“That’s where the historically the arm wrestle has been and maybe we won that a bit unusually well last time, so I know they’re going to try and make amends. 

“We look forward to the battle.”