On the 22-point win…

“We knew after the last three outings - obviously Ross mentioned it in his press conference that there would be some real purpose…when someone’s got your measure, you’re looking to stop the rot.

“I felt like we weathered a bit of a storm early. We tried to do things a bit differently and the game wasn’t stable.

“I was rapt with the way the boys just persevered and ultimately did enough.

“To allow the opposition to get inside-50 61 times – a lot of that had to do with our ball use coming out of our back end. But for them to only score 61 points from that, I thought there was enough pressure in the contest, enough work rate in our counter defence, and I thought our deepest backs did an extraordinary job to diffuse those situations.”

On Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera…

“We were obviously monitoring the Wanganeen-Milera situation – he had a lot of the ball and a lot of metres gained but he only had five score involvements.

“We were content that he could have 65 (disposals) if he wanted, but we were just going to keep playing in a systematic way.

“Ultimately there was a message or two to make sure in different circumstances we catered for his counter offence and his overlap run – which we didn’t necessarily do too well all the time."

On the ruck situation…

“I think it was a bit of a stalemate. I came in at quarter-time and they had four hit-outs to advantage to our one.

“He and Matt Kennedy were probably rucking the most. Crofty rucked a couple of times but there were some things we did differently.

“As much as we’ve been winning some games, our template needs to alter. We really took some risks tonight with what we did – we changed different things that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

“It’s just a great credit to our players to be willing to come in and out of their responsibilities - but we need to do things differently to beat the teams in the back-end of the year.

“We’ll go on a break now – and we’ve been in worse positions – but there’s a great opportunity up ahead if we can double-down on certain things and improve our skill level off the back of our defensive and pressure application, which I thought was pretty good tonight."

On the upcoming bye…

“We had a long lead into this game after three six-day breaks in the previous three games.

“We also had a break after Round 2 as we were one of the Round 0 teams…but (a bye) won’t do us any harm.

“I’m grateful the boys are applying themselves  - they’ve worked hard and we’ve had some games that we probably didn’t like the version of ourselves, but by and large the fight in the group and the close games that we’ve won are really credible.

“We've got a good platform to work from and huge challenge when we come back with Sydney in Sydney.

“We’ve still got to play some really formidable teams, but it’s a great challenge for us to not lose our focus too much as we take off around the place for four days.”