AFLW senior coach Scott Gowans appeared in his weekly press conference on Tuesday, October 22.

Ahead of a tough match against reigning premiers the Brisbane Lions, he discusses learnings for the young group, Rebecca Privitelli's season and the potential return date of Laura Gardiner.

On Round 8

“We've had a good review on it. You know, there was a number of things that we could have done better if we had our time again, but it's all part of learning and the journey that we're on. Credit to the Gold Coast, they did what they had to do to get the game. We've had different looks at the games in the past, you know, the ones that we've been close in, we've been coming late and this one we got in front late and had to hold on. All you can do is just take the learnings and move on, but everybody in the program is really frustrated.”

On learnings for the young group 

“We do train it a fair bit, we train it right through the pre-season, we have different scenarios for it. Part of the lessons out of the condensed fixture which we'll get to at the end of the year in the review is you just don't have the time to train and refresh on it, so we haven't done it for probably a month or so… There's nothing you can do other than review it and just hope that next time we're in that situation we can get it right.”

On the positives

“That's now our fourth time that we've been competitive in the fourth quarter and based on fitness where the block of work we did through the VFLW to get fit enough to be able to cope. I suppose it's just frustrating that you haven't snagged at least a couple of those but it's the way it is.”

On Rebecca Privitelli

“She's soldiered on this year. You've got to remember she came off a really nasty injury over the summer and after that Gold Coast final and to limited preparation. To play through the games the way she has and of course the plan was always to play Chloe Molloy with her as well which would sort of give Priv the second or third best defender but she's getting first, second and third at the moment. We try to help her as much as we can but the thing with Priv is she gets herself to such great positions on the ground that she attracts a bit of a crowd. She’s got a lot of lessons out of this year as well and I'm confident with a full preseason she'll be even stronger next year.”

On goals for the remainder of the season

“We've spoken about that what we need to get out of the program. We go into every game no matter the opposition and try and win it and one of the other lessons we have got out of this year is we've got the game plan, yep that's the A to Z but you've also got to play differently each week based on the opposition. Brisbane is no different this week and there's a certain way I think which we can play that can reflect the way we want the game to look.”

On Round 9

“We've taken the approach that it's just another challenge for us and the expectation from our perspective is to win. We just come up with the best way to do that and you know we don't want to be numbers behind the ball and slow the game to be a slog. We want to take the game on and know that they're very good at doing that as well. It’s a great opportunity to get the learnings out of out of the game that you're going to get out of playing the Premier and it's their home ground. We've got nothing to lose and we just go up there full of hope. But as I said there's an expectation that we win every game and that's got to be the mindset that we go with.”

On the squad’s third year in the AFLW

“The mindset has to be that you've got to just get better each week and I reckon we're pretty good at it and effort and intensity is unquestionable - we always bring that.

“The game against North I thought was fantastic with that. This week our effort intensity sort of fluctuated a little bit from Gold Coast’s pressure. Similar to the North game where you've got to turn those moments where you are being pressured into offensive movements and that's the next layer and so that's one of the focuses this week. When Brisbane do pressure us that that means that they're all going to be over the ball and we've got to flick that into ball movement from there. It's easy to say, it's easy to train but it's hard to do when you're under the pressure of a game.”

On Laura Gardiner’s return

“She's seeing the specialist Friday to get the tick off and then she would have to get through that session on Friday afternoon for her to play. The plan right through was to get her back for that Round 10 game so if the specialist comes back with better-than-expected news absolutely she'd be available. If she gets Round 9 in, that's an absolute bonus.”