Senior coach John Longmire appeared in his weekly press conference on Tuesday, July 25, where he discussed the challenges of Round 20 against Essendon and Callum Mills 150th career game.

On gaining momentum after back-to-back wins

 “It’s always a working progress. We feel we’ve had some momentum during different periods of the year, we just haven’t finished off the games. The last couples of weeks we’ve been able to do that which has been pleasing and we’ve had our nose in front when we’ve needed to be. We’re still working at that but we’re getting synergy back amongst the team and we’ve finished the games off strongly.”

On the end of last season

“We don’t tend to look backwards too much. It’s always about the here and now. What we do know is that if we play good footy, we’re consistent and we play for four quarters, we give ourselves a real chance. We understand that and have belief in that, but we still have to do it. Only because we’ve done it once doesn’t mean we can do it all the time – you’ve got to earn that right week in and week out.”

On Lance Franklin

“He got a knock early in the game and he came off but he recovered from that pretty quickly. He trained today and trained really well so that’s always a good sign. It’s going to be a week-to-week proposition for him – the good thing is he was able to train today – and we’ll see how he pulls up after that.”

On the synergy between the tall forwards

“They’ve missed a fair bit of footy – all of them at different times this year. You need to be able to work together and get a bit of rhythm together. They didn’t do a lot of training together in the pre-season either so now they’re getting that at training and on game day. That’s been improving. We were reasonably efficient at getting the ball forward last week and we won some important clearances which is equally important.”

On Chad Warner’s return

“He was okay. Sometimes you come into the team and it takes a bit of time to find your feet and I’m confident he’ll keep on improving. He’s a very good player for us. Those younger midfielders have an important role for us.”

On clearances

“It’s been an area we’ve been disappointed in at times, and it dropped away a bit. It cost us ground position, so it was good to get that under our belt last week and it will be the same challenge this week which is to make sure we get that ball in the front half and play the game up there.”

On Hayden McLean in the ruck

“We thought he did a reasonable job against Jackson. He’s a little bit undersized but he competes well, he’s predictable and gets in the right spots when he needs to. Our midfielders are starting to get a bit of confident which is a good sign. We still have a couples of rucks we can bring in if needed but we were pretty happy with how we went for the four quarters. He’s got a big motor, gets across the ground well.”

On Essendon

“They’ve been close games over the last couple of years. They’ve got a new coach now and we’ve noticed some changes in their style now. They’ve got some very good players, and everyone agrees they’ve had a good year up until this point. We’ll get down on their home deck and see how we go. We feel like they’ve made some changes and we’ll have to cater for that style and make sure we play a really competitive brand.”

On coaching styles

“The game moves so quick the way we coach has changed. Every three or four weeks you see changes in playing and style and different things to tweak. Because the games changes so much, the coaches tend to move with that because you have to.”

On Peter Ladhams

“He’s okay. The reserves didn’t play on the weekend which is costly for him. His ankle has a bit of scar tissue on it so he’s just loosening that up from what was a pretty severe injury. It’s certainly getting better, and he was able to train well today.”

On Callum Mills’ 150^th game

 “I remember him at 16 years of age and coming into my office and asking questions about our game plan. I walked into Tom Harley’s office afterwards and said he’d captain the team one day. He was such a massive competitor and really loved his footy, and was thoughtful even at that age. Since he’s come through the Academy system he’s become an integral cog to this footy club. He won our Club Champion award last year, an All-Australian and just a really important player to that younger group coming through.”

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