It’s always disappointing to not come away with a win and that was the case with last weekend’s draw with Fremantle. The message after the game was that we certainly weren’t happy with losing two points, especially given the score line with about eight minutes to go. There were a few lessons learnt there from some poor decisions, but also one of the key messages was about our poor start.

We were probably lucky to be as close as we were at quarter time because Fremantle started really well and were probably not able to get as much scoreboard pressure as they should have early in the game. In saying that we shouldn’t have lost two points from where we were in later stages of the game.

While there were areas of improvement from our loss to the Hawks the week before, I think there are still areas where we can get better, including our centre bounce work. We made some poor decisions with the ball when we could have maintained possession and we also found that we coughed it up in areas where we wouldn’t have liked to.

In saying that, our around the ground work was OK and certainly the work rate of our midfielder was really good and all our GPS data backed up what we thought we saw, so that certainly was a positive out of the game.

Tonight we take on Collingwood, who are a quality side and last week they beat Geelong, who were previously undefeated. In that match, the Magpies’ pressure was outstanding, and even though it’s been reasonable all year, I thought they really stepped it up a notch against Geelong.

The Cats probably have the best skills, along with Hawthorn, so to be able to put them under the pressure they did and to be able to turn the ball over is probably a good indication of where their focus was. They were really strong defensively and then were able to kick enough of a score and hold Geelong just under, and took out the four points.

Collingwood have also shown their depth this season, and even this week, with guys like Dale Thomas and Dayne Beams out, they’ve got the luxury of still having Scott Pendlebury, Dane Swan, Steele Sidebottom, as well as a couple of new players like Elliot and Dwyer playing really well. Then there is Blair, Krakouer, McCaffer and there is just name after name, so we are under no illusion that they’ve got some quality and that they played and beat a really good team last week.

Realistically, the Magpies level of pressure last week was exactly what we hope to start seeing more of from our boys this season. We pride ourselves on pressuring the opposition and once we got going last weekend against the Dockers we were able to pressure them, but not enough for long enough, so we’ll be looking to do that tonight.