On Tim English and injury questions:

“He’ll warm up and see how he is feeling.

“He declared himself fit last week, so we picked him and it probably didn’t turn out the way we thought it would.

“Ultimately, we’ve got to be convinced that he’s pretty close to 100 per cent to play this week.

“The players obviously want to play every week. Our medical staff are really conservative and they know what I’m like. I just don’t want players to play if it's any more than just a bit of discomfort.

“In hindsight, he maybe wasn’t totally ready to play last week. That’s unfortunate because that’s costly.

“I think it probably just stood out a bit because of the position, the ruck spot and what it entails.

“Ultimately, with him going and playing down back, we’d actually done a bit of that during pre-season, but we’d lost Connor Budarick just before half-time and Charlie Curnow was on track to kick a serious bag.

“It felt like we needed some height in our defence and Lobby was holding up alright in the ruck after we had really found it hard in parts of the first quarter in particular.

“It just made sense. Tim went OK down there, he defended reasonably well. It’s not something that you’d want to replicate.

“At his best, Tim can be a formidable ruckman and stabilise that stoppage and midfield group.

“It’s as basic as that. If he, at the end of this session, isn’t physically ready to do that, then he won’t play.

“I’ve got every thought in my head that he’s going to be able to move towards being influential again.”

On Lobb’s versatility this season:

“Lobby is a pretty good ruckman. He fights a good fight. Obviously, he’s long.

“As I’ve said in the past, he’s a great teammate. Wherever you ask him to play, he’ll just commit to it and go out and execute it as well as he can.

“Rory has been a pretty good key defender over the last period of time. At the moment, without Sam Darcy and with Crofty emerging, to make sure we have representation forward of the ball, we’ve needed Lobby up forward as well.

“Striking a balance with that as a team is important. We would like to have Rory play forward as well as ruck.

“Seeing if we can achieve that, especially if Tim doesn’t play, will be a pretty big challenge.”

On the Matt Kennedy result:

“In fast motion, those things always look a bit different but, when you slow it down, he definitely pulled up and turned his back on it.

“The downgrade has helped him be available this week.

“That’s a good outcome for us.”

On Sam Darcy’s recovery:

“He’s moving on pretty well, Sammy.

“He’s determined to accelerate his recovery and recuperation from the ACL injury.

“We’ll need to hold him back at times, but he seems to be on top of things.”

On West Coast and the approach:

“I’ve got no doubt that they’ll focus on their start again this week because they’ve been a team that hasn’t necessarily got out of the blocks on the scoreboard and let the opposition get a little bit of a margin on them.

“Other than that, it was only the centre bounce and the score from centre bounce where Adelaide got them.

“It was meritorious. Adelaide are a very good team and they beat us a few weeks ago.

“It’s going to be a significant challenge.

“We feel like they work really hard and have got some really promising younger guys, and some good stability with a handful of senior players who provide them with a core platform to work from.”

On Louis Emmett and form in the VFL:

“As I said earlier, it’s a difficult one to throw him into the ruck situation against the likes of someone like Bailey Williams because of that strength and experience.

“We’ve seen that be a really difficult thing, most recently against Carlton against Pittonet.

“He played extremely well as a forward against Williamstown. He’ll be considered to come in and provide us with that aerial contest forward of the ball, certainly.”

On Rhylee West and a possible recall:

“He’ll definitely be considered to come back up.

“He managed the challenge of playing state league and the disappointment of being omitted really well.

“He was influential in that win down there against the Seagulls.

“We’ll make some changes this week, we’ll need to.

“We’ll obviously lose a couple of our backmen in Nick Coffield and Connor Budarick, so there’s definite change there."

On the Bulldogs’ challenges scoring:

“We just need to alter what we’re doing a bit.

“We’re not getting the pressure outcomes that we need, our scoring has dried up, and we’ll need to come in with a couple of different plans to explore how we can improve those areas.

“We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”

“There’s no doubt that the other component to pressure is being able to deal with it yourself.

“It’s one of the reasons we’re not scoring well, because we haven’t necessarily been able to distribute and get out of our back end when we should.

“We had something like 35 defensive 50 stoppages we had to deal with because we couldn’t exit.

“It’s not just the front end, it’s how we’re getting out of our back half as well.

“We think we can get a spike there from what we do but, you still need to contend with a tenacious opposition each week, which is another part of our challenge.”

On the Croft and Naughton partnership:

“Crofty has been playing on the wing, so I don’t really see it as a partnership.

“What happened last week, when we had to change things, we had Crofty go into our forward line and play that role.

“Marks have dried up, but it’s not just because Aaron’s not taking contested marks.

“We’re not finding him on open-field plays. Partly, it’s our pattern forward of the ball but, definitely, it’s our decision-making and skill level. It’s just gone a bit sour.

“We all take responsibility for that. We go out and train it again today, we try and set the scene for the game on Sunday against the Eagles and look for an uptick in it.

“We feel like we can get there.

“The boys are capable enough and we need to fill them with the confidence required.”