Not a pretty win but, an important one nontheless.
Head Coach Tam Hyett spoke honestly on the Dogs' performance following the 30-point win over the Saints in Round 8.
While pleased with the outcome, Hyett believes the team will need to go to work on some fundamentals ahead of the upcoming Pride Game next Friday night.
Here's what Hyett had to say:
On the performance:
“We spoke about it post game.
“It’s a nice one to bank. I don’t know whether we’ll watch it back - it’ll be a pretty tough review.
“Those are the wins you’ve got to bank.
“Conditions were pretty tough. Coaching from the bench, I didn’t know sometimes what way the wind was going, it was slippery, but as we said to the players - your ability and your willingness to just continually turn up and go to work, that’s something we’re happy with.”
On Alice Edmonds:
“Well, they don’t get shorter. That’s something that my dad always said, the talls don’t get any shorter.
“She just puts herself in really good positions. She’s probably - because of the seasons of our mids in general, they can only have those seasons because of the work that she does. She’s been huge.
“She had a week off last week and came back really well this week.
“She’s pretty ruthless. Sometimes she thinks that she’s a follow-up player, a ‘drop-a-ball’ player. She does a lot of work on it.
“That’s the thing as a ruck, if you can follow up your work it’s an added bonus.”
On the approach to the game and playing to the conditions:
“Knowing that (St. Kilda) like to keep it inside the bubble, if we can get it outside that real ‘hunt’ layer, they like to get numbers to the ball.
“Any opportunity to get it outside and get the ball moving forward, especially with those conditions, yeah - we spoke about that pre game.
“I thought the players, early, did that well. They probably overused the ball a little bit.
“That’s natural probably. We’re still trying to evolve our method, so sometimes they’re very literal and we probably did try to use too much shape rather than shoulders out and take it forward.
“That was pleasing.”
On bringing the physical pressure early:
“We probably were disappointing last week with our inconsistency with being able to pressure so it was something that was high on the agenda this week.
“We want to be ruthless and I thought that they really turned up well today.”
On Griggs’ tackling pressure:
“I’m just glad that I’m not a St Kilda player.
“She’s a weapon, but she goes about it in the right manner.
“She knows that if she can bring some really strong defensive intent in her actions, that gives her an opportunity to get involved in the game.
“I thought Griggy was really good today.”
On the work inside 50:
“Fundamentally, we weren’t great today.
“I thought some of our options, we probably needed to thin it out a little bit more inside 50 and give our keys a greater opportunity to impact.
“That’s something we’ll go to work on.
“We spoke about getting the ball in quick and probably, sometimes, we chose the wrong way to get the ball in rather than maybe using an extra kick to get some shape and some outside leading lane.
“That’s something that we’ll work on and review.
“We didn’t capitalize on our work and that comes down to some of the decisions that we made with ball in hand.”
On Cleo’s move to on ball:
“It’s been great.
“To be honest, we didn’t really put her in the midfield in pre-season.
“As it got closer to Round 1 we knew that she was an option that we could potentially put in the odd centre bounce.
“I think it was one of the last practice games, we put her in a couple of centre bounces and she made a really strong impact.
“Her power and speed, she offers a point of difference with our midfield group.
“Her development in there has been really, really good.”
On Tam making the team her own:
“I’m not shy in saying that 2024 was a real discovery year for us. It was a significant turnover of staff and players.
“We were learning about everyone. Not just players, but how staff operated and also what the strengths of the playing group were.
“Last year we were able to consolidate some of the behaviours and things that we were working on in year one and also our contest work.
“We probably went really strong foundation defensively in Season 9, which was my first year. Last year, we went to work on our contest and we knew it was going to take time.
“Sometimes we’re a little bit impatient with this industry. Not everyone can play like North Melbourne, nor have the playing list of North Melbourne.
“You’ve got to go to work with what you’ve got and we think that we’re progressing really well across the three phases of our game.”
On the remainder of the season:
“We’re 6-2 now.
“You want to be playing the best teams and that’s how you can get some good feedback on where you’re actually at.
“We’re probably focused now on Essendon pretty quickly.
“I spoke to the players post game and everything now is for Pride Game next Friday night, which is the Bulldogs’ 100th game which is pretty exciting.
“All of our focus is now on what we can do against Essendon.”
