Adam, how tough a loss was that one to swallow?

Not a great feeling in the rooms after the game. It’s disappointing we didn’t take our chances. Collingwood started really well again, we worked our way back in to the game and missed out on a couple of opportunities when we had our dominance and then it came down to whoever was in front at the right time in the last quarter and unfortunately it wasn’t us.

How did they come to beat you when you had such a clear edge at centre clearances? I think you had five goals out of centre clearances and got a massive effort from Nic (Naitanui) in that game. What was happening elsewhere to erode that do you think?

It’s probably been a bit of an issue for us all year. Centre bounces have been a real strength of ours, but you can’t rely on that for field position. We need to find another way. Our inability to keep it in our front half and capitalise was a concern. There were moments when their midfield was on top or their forwards were on top and they made the most of their opportunities and when we had an opportunity to put some damage on the scoreboard we probably weren’t as sharp or not as clean or polished in front of goals.

Simmo what did you make of Mason Cox and how dominant he was? What was going through your mind at that point?

They were three good marks. It’s a little bit unusual for our boys to concede that. To be honest we usually back in our players to work through it. We did a couple things like putting an extra behind the play and they equalised pretty quick, but that sort of settled down. Unfortunately in finals, especially when they go for 100 minutes, conceding three goals in a row puts you on the back foot. It didn’t cost us the game, but it helped set up the game for them.

Adam, it’s obviously incredibly early to be asking a question like this, but how do you think you’re going to look back on this season? There’s been so many twists and turns and so many sacrifices and so many challenges. How are you going to look back on this year?

That’s a great question. I think every club has sacrificed a lot to put this show on the road and we’re no different than all the other clubs that have had to travel at stages with hubs and quarantine. Players have played for half their salary, we’ve had to stand down a third of our staff and it’s been an emotional rollercoaster really. It’s really disappointing that you don’t have anything to show for it. I think will hurt a bit more than losing by a point against the Pies tonight. It hurts a little bit more the fact that you put so much effort into this season. No one really stopped working in the 8-10 weeks we had off. Every club will be feeling the same if they don’t win the flag this year. It always feels like a bit of a waste. I’m still prod of what we’ve done. The growth we’ve had with so many young players has been positive. We got to work through some trying times with injuries and form and we stuck fat and we’re still united. As much as I’m really disappointed with tonight, I’m still proud of how we went about it this season.

Adam the fact you had to bring players back with less than ideal preparations, it’s an elimination final so you basically have to do it, but was it a factor at all in the outcomes?

I don’t know. I thought the guys that came in were pretty good. I think Luke (Shuey) was a little bit off his best, Jamie Cripps was pretty good and Reddo (Jack Redden), it probably wasn’t his best game but not his worst. I thought as a collective Collingwood just had better moments where their dominance turned into scores. That’s about it. When you lose by a point as much as you want to be critical or praise the opposition, it’s a pretty even game. I’m sure Bucks (Nathan Buckley) and the Pies and really proud of what they’ve done. Look, both teams played with spirit.

Simmo, it’s been two years in a row where you’ve only just missed out on a top four spot. How much do you reflect on that and thinking about how different those two years could have been if only one little thing went your way?

It hurts, but that’s on us. I think two years in a row we’ve missed out on the top four through percentage and if you look back in this year, apart from tonight, we lost two games after round five and that was to the Tigers and the Doggies by a couple of points. When you look back on our season we lost three in a row early in the year and we lost by plenty, so that hurt our percentage. We turned things around and our system improved and our individuals improved, but in the end with a 17-round season you can look back on every game and have moments of reflection and I suppose those three games we played earlier in the year when we didn’t get our act together hurt us.

And just looking at the ago profile of your squad, it still looks like you’ve got a really stable squad with a lot of room to grow. Just from your opinion, how do you see things?

We want sustained success. We want growth with our kids and we want to bring in talent; we want all of those things. We want to win and unfortunately tonight we didn’t get the chocolates and we’re disappointed. But we’ve still got hope for our younger players coming through and we think our senior players are still holding up their end of the bargain. We still think there’s growth in our list and we’ll keep looking at what’s out there and try and go through the draft if we need to. Just like every club, we will be trying to get better next year. We have to get better because we weren’t good enough this year.

Adam how close are you to re-signing Shannon Hurn and Josh Kennedy?

They were pretty good tonight. They didn’t look too old tonight. JK (Kennedy) played with a bit of an ankle (injury) and Shannon really stood up for us. It’s obviously sensitive when you start talking about legends of the club. I think both of those guys have done more than enough to look to next year. We’ve got to talk to them and see what they want to do, but we’ll work through that and work through those guys in the next few weeks.