Senior coach Dean Cox appeared in his weekly press conference on Wednesday, August 13. Hear what he had to say on playing Geelong, the team’s win over the Brisbane Lions and Isaac Heneey’s form. 

On playing Geelong this Sunday

“We’re really excited about Geelong and the prospect of playing them at home. It’s our last home game against a really good outfit and another chance to test ourselves and focus on what we can control going into the back end of the year and also next year as well.”

On the win over the Lions

“Yeah, the boys played well. To their credit, they executed the plan that we went in with and really wanted to test themselves certainly away from home against a quality opposition. The way they played, certainly the way our defenders defended really set us up for the ability to springboard off our back line. It was really impressive.”

On how the season started

“I think at the start it was challenging and having said that, from what we learnt at the start of the season with different personnel probably helped us for the back half of the year about changing the way we want to play…but that’s still not a finished product. It’s about trying to make sure that we can get the players we want to play a certain brand of footy and execute that consistently. No, unfortunately you can’t control what has happened. We’ve got to make sure that we put our best foot forward to finish the year as well as we can.”

On the frustration of this year’s result

“There’s a bit of frustration, there’s a bit of disappointment that we’re not playing finals. That’s what we start our pre-season and every year of football chasing. The reality is we can’t do that. Once we found that out it was deflating, that’s what the players strive so hard to get to. Now, we understand and we will reflect once the season finishes why we didn’t get there. That’s the most important part we have to do.”

On causing upsets ahead of finals

“I’ve never been one to try and be a disruptor. I think one thing that we try and do is to build a brand that is consistent and the one that we want to go forward with. Also, you never want to miss an opportunity and the chance we have in front of us is to try and take this opportunity of not playing finals and try some things different.

Then on top of that, if we play great teams, even better because we get a chance to test ourselves against the best. Does it stand up? Will it work? What do we have to adjust? What do we look at over the finals campaign and also through the pre-season about how we went against these teams? That’s all my focus first of all.”

On Isaac Heeney

“I think the whole industry admire what Isaac can do on a football field. I think as soon as you’re not in the top couple of teams you don’t get spoken about as frequently. That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t had the year that he’s had last year.

“I think when you talk about Isaac and I’ve looked across some of the other stats of players they’re talking about being in the All-Australian team and All-Australian captains and things like that. Isaac’s had as good a year as all of them. Unfortunately we just haven’t won enough games to be spoken about enough for a specific player. He’s been phenomenal for our footy club. Week in, week out. There’s not many players can do what he does in the midfield and then go forward and really turn a game as well.”

On the upcoming trade period

“We go in the trade period and hunt for anyone that will suit the way we want to play. I think that includes a key forward, a dynamic mid, a key back, a dangerous small forward. It includes a lot of things.

“That’s one thing that we’re always open about is trying to make sure that we obviously do whatever we can to improve our list. And we’ll do that. The hard part is you can’t always get it done. We want to make sure that we’re really potent ahead of the ball.”

On Brodie Grundy’s concussion

“He’s okay. He’s doing all the protocols. He’s doing all the testing he needs to do. Getting his body moving and reporting really well through that. So that’s the first part of the protocol process is to make sure that he can tick off every day as it comes.

“He’ll sort of ramp his training up at the back end of this week and into next week. He’s a massive loss for the footy team, the footy he’s been playing. Pete Ladhams has played some really good VFL football, so he’ll get his opportunity to lead the run.”

On Will Hayward

“He’s good. He trained fully on Saturday. He has to try and make sure that he gets through this week. And if he gets through this week, he’s available.”

On Nick Blakey’s 150th milestone game

“I think the good thing with Nick is he’s an academy product. He’s loved the footy club ever since he was a young man. He has been an unbelievable talent for our organisation. I think if you talk about not only what he does on the field, but the attention he gets off it because of the way he plays. He’s really exciting, dynamic. I think the thing with Nick is he’s now adding intercept marking to his game.

“I think the last couple of weeks, that’s been a really strong part of his game. There’s plenty of highlights. There’s also plenty of defensive work that he does for the footy team. We’ll celebrate that as well as we possibly can for him.”