On Tom Liberatore’s availability:  

“No (he won’t get up), not this week. He’s working his way back to being available if we keep going, so I don’t want to speculate too much beyond it. 

“It probably wasn’t a consideration for this week, but he’s going okay. He’s on legs and he’s covering a bit of ground. Obviously surgery is always invasive, but it was a pretty simple sort of clean out.  

“If we keep going (in the finals series) he might be available in 1-2 weeks time.” 

On Aaron Naughton:  

“He got through the game okay with that – you saw him grab at the back of his leg a couple of times. He was cramping a little bit in his hamstring, but he’s fine. 

“He trained today and I think he’ll just be a little bit better than he was last week.” 

On facing the Crows: 

“We’ve just got to batten down the hatches and really internalise on what we need to do to beat the Crows, and just stay out of all of that (noise).  

“Our record on the road has been reasonably strong, and two out of three ain’t bad as they say. 

“The boys enjoy playing there – it's a great arena and they enjoy playing at Adelaide Oval. Obviously you can’t go past a heaving MCG with a lot of Collingwood supporters, and I imagine Adelaide Oval will be heaving as much as that, but it’ll be loud and I think the boys will enjoy it.” 

On the frenetic finish to the Wildcard Final: 

“We’re buoyed by the spirit and momentum. That game was part of it, but we’ve played three games in 12 days, so we go into this week with an eight-day turnaround which is nice just to freshen up a little bit. 

“This week we’ve been able to choose and place our training, so I think we’ll run out there reasonably fresh. We can only benefit from the experience and the scope to stay calm under that sort of pressure – not that we all did – but it’s a great experience and will help us going into this one.” 

On Tim English and Ryan Gardner’s roles: 

“They’ll both play in the ruck, it’s just working out the duration. It’s definitely going to happen but we’ll work through what the combinations are. 

“We’ll start a certain way and navigate our way through the game. 

“It’s rare for Tim to start on the bench, and he felt like he had some ascendancy at different times, particularly at the stoppage, and I agreed with him. 

“My message to Tim (at three-quarter time) was we need to get him through to the end of the game. The timing of his game-time was that he was going to be on the ground at the end of the quarter – it's the reason why he started off. 

“He wanted to influence the outcome and I get it, but I think we shared that load with the position better as the game went on. 

“He had some really telling involvements in that last five or six minute sequence, and really helped us win especially his centre bounce influence.” 

On nullifying Izak Rankine’s impact:  

“His role seems to be a bit more midfield-based at the moment. We’ve always rated a hell of a whole number of their playmakers and sort of game influencers – their captain Jordan Dawson is another one of them. 

“Izak is going to be another midfield headache, so we’ll just need to spread the load and work through it.  

“I can’t tell you exactly what the tactical implications are, but he’s a pivotal figure in the midfield brigade.” 

On Connor Budarick’s impact this season: 

“He’s been brilliant. He was obviously out for a period of time, but he’s now finding his feet again.  

“We played him at either end of the ground in his first two back, and that might happen again in this game depending on what unfolds and what we need. 

“He’s been a really important player coming to us from the Suns, and over the journey he’ll just get better and better.” 

On reflecting on the home-and-away campaign: 

“I think we went through a pretty traumatic period after the Geelong game, and we pretty much lost our spine – we lost Rory Lobb, James O’Donnell, Tim English. 

“We lost Sam in that (Geelong) game, we lost Tom Liberatore after that as well, both Marcus, Ed Richards and Aaron were all carrying some kind of injury they could get through the games with.  

“We needed to lean on a lot of the younger players to perform roles, and they all did their best. We endured a four-week losing stretch where we weren’t looking like we were at the start of the year. 

“For our players and our staff to, I suppose keep the faith and just remain in that sort of resilient mind and approach to the season, it’s just a huge credit to everyone. 

“To give ourselves a look and knock over the Wildcard Final, and to see some of the younger guys now bubbling a bit and starting to influence games, it’s really encouraging for our supporters. 

“I think genuinely going over to Adelaide it’s just enticing. You really sort of salivate over the opportunity in being down to the final eight and knowing what it means to get beyond this week.  

“It’s great incentive to keep going as always.”