IT was good to get back on the winner’s list on Saturday. Up there the Gold Coast Suns can be a dangerous side.

They have a lot of great young talent and if they’re at their best they can beat sides which they’ve shown this year, so we had to make sure we were prepared for them at their strongest.

We matched them in a lot of areas. We need to keep working on our ball use, we didn’t get all of that right, but in terms of contested footy, we were up on that, and we won the uncontested footy as well, which means we worked hard on the inside and spread well on the outside.

There are good signs for us in the form of young guys like Luke Parker, who got a late call up to play against the Suns after Jude got hurt in the warm up.

Parks was emergency, and Horse (coach John Longmire) has come in and told him to get ready to play with five minutes or so to spare.

It shows what a great young player he is and what a bright future he has ahead of him.

He had a lot of the footy, kicked a couple of goals, ran really hard and didn’t look out of his depth at all.

We had a good mix of goal kickers against the Suns so it gives us a bit of confidence leading into the next couple of weeks, starting with Freo this week, which is a massive game for us.

It’s sixth versus seventh, which speaks for itself in terms of how important it is. We’re only two points ahead of them on the ladder and if we want to be really competitive for this next part of the year and to make sure we play finals, this game is it. Everything is on the line against Freo.

All the players want to make sure we have a really good week on the track and keep working on the areas we need to improve, and concentrate on bringing our best at home against Freo.

That’s what we’ll need if we are to have any chance of knocking them off. They beat us here last year which means they are going to be confident they can win at the SCG.