Q – On Grand Final day itself we were 14 points up at half time, actually 20 points up just before the siren went – what were your thoughts looking at the players in the rooms at half time. Were you confident they could win still?

A – I was actually very confident we’d win. I’d have to confess I thought we were fortunate to be in front. I think Brisbane squandered a lot of opportunities in the first quarter particularly and we capitalised on that. On the same hand they had the momentum probably going in, they’d just kicked a goal. I think the third quarter - I look back now and think we had our chance to actually get further ahead and possibly sew up the game. I think once Brisbane got momentum going they were going to be very hard to stop and they were hard. If circumstances had have been different and we got two of those three opportunities we missed out on at the start of the third quarter it might have been a different result. At half time the players looked good, they were ready to go and no excuses, we were just out played.

Q – Just touching on a few of the factors that people believed counted against us, the knee injuries you already mentioned – Misiti, Mercuri, Alessio, Blumfield, Heffernan – some people say it was going to be good they missed so they would be fresh come finals time. Others say it probably didn’t give them the fitness base they needed to play a big final. Which is the correct way to look at it?

A – Look if we had of won, everybody would have said, “I told you so, I told you so.” I think you have to say we were playing catch up footy nearly all year. I think almost the game against the Kangaroos that was almost symbolic of our whole year – playing catch-up footy – we’ll get there. We had enormous belief. I said at the beginning of the year to coaching staff and players that in my opinion there was only two things that would stop us from winning the flag – the first one was complacency – the players coming back and saying “we’ve already won a flag, she’ll be right” and the other one would be injuries. Well it certainly wasn’t complacency. In fact when I look at our fitness standards and everything across the year, we are pretty much ahead of everything on the graph as compared to 2000. The players trained harder and at a better level than they’d ever done. In terms of injuries, we copped injuries like we never had before at my time at the club and they were injuries that were out of our control – knee injuries. I mean it was just, you’d almost put it down to misadventure and there’s not much you can do about that. We had guys on six to seven, even 13 week rehabilitation programs and thinking yes they’ll come back – yes they were fit but they weren’t match fit – and that’s where we were really caught out. How else do you get match fit but to play footy? Well that’s the challenge ahead of me. If this circumstance comes around next year or the year after, or whenever, then I can have the players coming back onto the ground better.