Q. Have you received any word from Wayne Carey's people?
A. No. We have made our picture clear on that. We have X amount of money to offer Wayne and we have a good footy team and a good football club. That is all you can do. We are not offering thousands of millions of dollars - that is not in the ball park for us. The ball park for us is to make an honest offer from an honest footy club.
Q. Will Alessio play this week?
A. I would be disappointed if he didn't play this week.
Q. What about Mark Mercuri?
A. A lot will depend on how he trains this week. It is no good rushing him back, but I would like him to at least play in the seconds.
Q. Would he need a couple in the twos?
A. Well the twos don't have two - that is one of the problems.
Q. If Mercs doesn't get up for the seconds game, does it make it hard for him to get back into the side?
A.I still think he would be a very good player off the bench. That is one of the very good things about him - he can play.
Q. It comes to the time of the year where you want a settled side going into the finals...
A. I have had a settled side for most of the year - I haven't dropped many. I have kept as much faith in them and given them as much confidence as I can when you are going through a tough year. But most of the clubs that are between nine and 11 wins have been through that. Anywhere from under Collingwood have all had a medium year. I think that next eight teams are even - their percentages are the same, wins and losses are the same - so I think the AFL would be very happy in terms of the evenness of the season.
Q. Any news on Justin Blumfield?
A. He may miss, but that is very unlikely. That is all we know at this stage.
Q. Mark Bolton has had a good year for you...
A. He has been terrific for us and I am really pleased for him. It has been very, very difficult sitting behind the likes of Wellman, Fletcher, Dean Wallis and Dean Solomon - there is your four talls, that we had for quite a long period in the first three years of his career. Even Henneman played more of the year than he did last year.
Q. Has he been borderline at any stage - because it has taken a while for him?
A. It has, but the team probably had no real reason to make a lot of drastic changes because we won 80% of our matches. The backline has always been up amongst it and been one of the best defensive units.
Q. These next couple of games are important - people will assume that you will win them...
A. They are crucial for us. We can't assume that we will win them. We had our best win and we beat a top four team which is great and it will give the players a lift in confidence, but from a team point of view we don't need to be beaten by Fremantle twice in a year and stop us from making the finals. That is what I will be saying to the players.
Q. Do you expect Carlton will save one last effort for you?
A. They always have and they always will, but we have Fremantle this week and I am not even thinking about Carlton at the present time.
In other breaking news:
Q. Fremantle are in good form at the moment and had a good win against Geelong on the weekend..
A. Fremantle had a terrific win on the weekend and they have already beaten us this year. Fremantle have already beaten us once and we don't want to be missing out on the finals because Fremantle Dockers have beaten us twice in the year. The most important thing is that we continue that form in against Fremantle who have had a good win against Geelong. I just think it was so important for us to get a win against a top four side. We have had a pretty tough run - we have played Brisbane, Adelaide, Collingwood and Geelong, in basically the last month or so. It was good to win against Collingwood and build onto this in the next week or two.
Q. The match against Collingwood was important for your team…
A. It was important. We said to our players, it was such a crucial game. Salmon is 37 and to ruck all night was fantastic. Gary Moorcroft not only kicked five goals but also helped in three others.
Q.What are your thoughts about fans running out onto the ground?
A. It can be very dangerous when people run on the ground. It happened to me back in 1974 when I was playing in a game against Essendon, when Des Tuddenham was coach and I accidently broke his leg. Walking off the ground I got king hit by a fan and I was filthy. I turned around and it was a woman and the lady just didn't know how lucky she was. Your first thoughts are - get out of my space. I just don't think fans should be allowed to do it and I don't think they know the dangers they are coming towards because players in that mood of competitiveness - you are not sure just what happens when you get near a person in competitive mood.
