You always go in concerned about the opposition, and we did have that in our minds last week because GWS beat us in round one and we knew they would really fire up to play their cross-town rivals. With that in mind, we were really pleased with the result in that we came away in the end with a good win in front of our home crowd at the SCG.

From a defensive point of view, we were really pleased with the way our key defenders played last Saturday. In round one GWS’s tall forwards in Jeremy Cameron and Jonathon Patton kicked seven goals between them and we were disappointed with that as a back-six. So, for those players to only kick two goals this time around was a real win for us and defensively I thought we played pretty well.

This week we have yet another challenge ahead of us taking on the West Coast Eagles in Perth. You look at their side and their forward line and they’ve got some real strength up there with their talls. They have Jeremy McGovern in the side, and he’s been catching everything up forward, but then you of course have Josh Kennedy and Jack Darling running around as well as the resting ruckman. The challenges are there for us again this week because their midfield is very good and they’ve got a forward line that is capable of kicking a big score, so it certainly is going to be a very tough game this week.

We’ve had a fairly good record over a number of years when it comes to travelling over to Perth to play, but that doesn’t suggest that the trip is easy by any definition. We go over there fairly early and train on Patersons Stadium, so we do allow plenty of time for our players to adjust. We go over early so the players have enough time to prepare for Sunday’s match and also so we can get that good training session in. Heading over on Thursday night also means that it gives us a day to relax on Saturday before we play on Sunday afternoon. It is a tough trip, but fortunately for us, some of our results have been quite pleasing, so hopefully we can keep that up this weekend.

Last week was our tenth consecutive win, but we really don’t think about the winning streak at all. You can talk about us winning ten in a row, but the facts are that this week we just have to win a game of footy. This week, all we have to do is win one in a row. Not much changes for us in the way we go about it regardless of our results the week before. We’ve got to win the contested footy because we know if that drops away then we’re vulnerable to losing. We will go about this week the same way we have every other week, and we’re looking forward to the challenge.