It was a bright start but it quickly got away from you guys, didn’t it?

Yeah it did, obviously the scoreboard speaks for itself. Our inability to hit the scoreboard is a fair concern, we’ve been going after a lot of things, contest, clearance and those types of things, so, there’s some small wins there, but we need to get better at converting and keeping it in our front half, albeit, we had 51 inside 50s today and they had the same amount. So, we look at some of those things and go, ok, well there’s a little bit of improvement there, but it’s no excuse for the loss, and obviously we’re in a build, it’s going to take time. We’ll look at some positives, but we’ve got to be better than that.

At the start of the season, did you think the rebuild was going to be this tough this early on?

Yes. It’s three rounds in, that’s what we’ve got to be up for. There’s going to be ups and downs, we’ll have some good days, but today, we’ll always take things out of the game as a learning experience, and I think there is parts of the game we’re starting to see our identity. Our mids are working their backsides off to give some supply, clearances, centre-bounce clearances, our senior players look good and fresh and playing their part. There's some things there that we will still take positives from, but in terms of the holistic look at the game, we can’t put it all together at the moment. So that’s something we’re working on and will continue to work on.

How much worse off would you have been without Jeremy McGovern today?

Him and Yeo, and Kelly, you need your senior players. So, I don’t know how young we were this week, probably second, first, third youngest, I don’t know, but the senior players are so important in that. I’ve said this a few times, we’re either 30 plus or we’re 19-20. So while those kids get to learn and grow and understand what it’s like for a full season, you need your senior players, they’re critically important. And that’s what we saw over the last couple of years, those guys weren’t around and it made it harder, so, we understand it wasn’t pretty today, I thought we could have hit the scoreboard a bit more to be honest, but still not enough, no where near enough.

It seemed like when the Bulldogs started ramping up the pressure in the first half, that’s pretty much where the game was won, is that one of the more concerning aspects, how quickly the game got away from you guys?

I think the pressure from the three sides we’ve played has been exceptional. We’re struggling to put that pressure on because we can’t get the ball back, and force the team to kick it to a contest, so we’re working hard on that. And on the flip side, we’re getting forced to make silly errors, the synergy in our ball movement need a lot of work, especially in our front half. We have been working on some other things, but we’ll continue to get to work and try and get better.

You’ve got an opportunity where you’re away at the moment for a few extra days, how do you get the confidence up, especially with some of these younger guys, or lifted while you’re away?

Just be honest. We’re not hiding from anything. So we’re pretty pragmatic, but you can’t be down on yourself too much, we just want to get better. If they turn up with the right attitude on Monday, reflect on what we need to get better at, then take the next step forward, and just keep moving forward. It’s not ‘let’s just get games into these kids’, or ‘let’s hope McGovern plays really well’, we need to get better, all of us. We’re together this week, I think we train on Thursday here, and then head to Adelaide. It’s a great chance to get together and bond and connect and have conversations around getting better.

After the last couple of years you’ve had, and the first three weeks your average losing margin is 64 points again, how hard is it to sell the hope to the fans that things will get better, is it really challenging?

We want to bring our fans along on our journey and what we’re doing. We want to win, we definitely want to win, we need to get these things right around the fundamentals, so we want to play the game in the front half more, which we did a little bit today. We want to get better at the contest and stoppages, which we did a little bit today. But we don’t want to kick just three goals. We’ve appreciated our support for a number of years, and the tough times are at the moment, absolutely. We’ve had plenty of good times over the years, and right now we’ve just got to stick fat, and keep trying to get better.

A couple of the players got reported in the WAFL, Alex Witherden and Harry Edwards, so you’ll be down a few, and Burgiel with the appendix, do you have many options to move the magnets around?

Absolutely, I think we’ve got probably the standard amount of injuries that clubs have so, next week, Dom Sheed will come back through the WAFL, Jai Culley, Liam Ryan will be playing WAFL soon, so we’ve missed those senior players over the journey but what we used to do is just throw them back into the seniors, but we’ve got a little bit more depth in terms of availability so we can train them up to get ready to play AFL.