WE still very much believe we’ll play finals football.
The players are granted some time away from the club for the bye this weekend, given they’ve got a run of six games to finish the season.
We planned for this approach to the bye at the beginning of the year and won’t be changing it or adding any extra training sessions just because we’ve lost four straight.
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READ NOWWe clearly won the contested ball and the stoppage count against Peel at Arena Joondalup on Saturday but didn’t beat them in the stat that mattered in the 16.3 (99) to 9.15 (69) loss.
The players had plenty of opportunities to score with 60 inside 50s to 35 for the match.
We went into half-time having kicked eight behinds to the Thunder’s eight goals. It didn’t help that we had kicked two or three shots out on the full.
Peel was particularly accurate with 15 goals straight at one point, but we made it much simpler for them by allowing easy shots. They had 11 scoring shots at three-quarter time, which would normally not be a bad defensive effort for us, but because it was 11 goals that meant we were out of the game.
We kicked seven majors in the final term, and while that looks good on paper, the Thunder kicked five of their own.
Chris Keunen had a minor hamstring injury but we think he’ll be right for the next game.
Andrew Strijk had some soreness around his hand and wrist.
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