IT SEEMS this year more than ever, the football world has been placing importance on forward and midfield pressure. More often than not, winning teams are managing to keep the ball inside their forward half and apply good pressure on opposition ball movement. Gone are the days when a forward’s only role is to find the ball and kick a goal.

Midfield and forward pressure has a massive impact on the outcomes of games. If you can affect the quality of the opposition’s use going forward then it is a big factor.

One of the best pressure players at Hawthorn is young Cyril Rioli. There are a lot of great qualities he possesses but his best quality is his ability to apply pressure on the opposition.

We need more of a consistent effort in that regard with our pressure right across the board from here on in.

Cyril has got a really good nature about him. He takes all instructions on board and does his best to put them in place. He is leading the way with his attitude and his fight on the field.

He was one of our best in what was a disappointing night against Essendon on Friday.

The Bombers have got a lot of players with that real outside speed. Their run and overlap is what really counted against us. Our pressure across the ground wasn’t good enough and that in turn made life tough for our defenders

We have had some players come back into the team of the last couple of weeks and hope to get a few more back in the coming weeks including Brent Guerra, Clinton Young, Xavier Ellis, Stephen Gilham and Rick Ladson.

 A real positive of our affiliation with Box Hill  is having the option of bringing guys back who have had extended time on the sidelines, through the VFL as they build up their match fitness.

We are going to need all hands on deck this Friday night when we venture over to Perth to take on Fremantle.

The Dockers are playing some great footy at the moment. We’re facing them on their home turf and we have to play some good footy to challenge them. We need to get the best mix down back and hope our midfielders can give us more use than theirs.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.