THE MOST pleasing thing about our victory over Fremantle is that we got challenged in the third quarter and our leaders really stood up in that final term to help get us over the line. The same thing happened last year against the Dockers but we ended up on the wrong end of the result, so it really showed the maturity level of the players and that they’ve really grown from last year.

The performance of Hodge, who had a quiet night for three quarters but had a real impact in that last quarter, as well as Chance Bateman and Brad Sewell was impressive.

Cyril Rioli was a good contributor again scoring two goals. He is a really grounded young man. He’s been living in Victoria for the last four years and went to school at Scotch College and that’s served his footy career well. His defensive pursuit work has been really pleasing.

We were really pleased with the performance of Travis Tuck. The thing we really like about him is he’s very coachable and very willing to learn. He’s always wanting to improve. He’s a great example to the young kids on our list that if you do the work and you’re a very coachable, enthusiastic person, you’re going to get rewarded.

Tom Murphy had another solid game. We gave him another big job on Chris Tarrant and to keep him to seven possessions and no goals was really an important job for us.

With Buddy, although he had a quieter game than last week, the pleasing thing for us now is his ability to force the contest. If you look at the difference between him now and when he first came in, he’s got so much more of a presence up forward. Contests that he’s not entitled to win, he’s actually winning now. To score four goals and have a hand in a number of others when he’s probably playing against two to three opponents is a great result and a sign of him maturing as a player.

As for playing North Melbourne this week, we think our guys are physically and mentally more mature at this stage as compared to last year.

The guys are looking forward to the challenge of the Kangaroos this week. We’ve had pretty close contests over the past few years. They’re a very good team and they test you mentally as well as physically. They throw a lot of things around with regards to their match-ups. They wear sides down. Dean Laidley is a very tactical coach and it is one of those games that you come out knowing that you’ve coached.

The trip back from Perth means we’ll focus a lot on recovery this week. It was quite hot over there as well and our players did run hard, so we have to make sure that the players are doing everything they can to get their bodies right.