The full transcript of Brad Scott’s chat to the media in his post-match media conference after the clash against Sydney

Q: Brad what did you make of that?

Scott: It’s pretty simple really. Sometimes the game’s not, there’s a fair bit of nuance involved but today was simple.

We just got obliterated around the ball, in contested possession, and then allowed Sydney to control it. There were only a few patches of the game we were able to play the game the way we wanted it to be played, and the rest – Sydney to their credit set it up well – won the ball in the contest and then dictated terms.

It could have been a lot worse to be honest.

Q: How do you explain that and were they any indications before the game?

Scott: We actually came in very well prepared for what Sydney were going to throw at us. We know largely they’ve got their personnel back, they’ve got their inside midfield going. Last week they got going.

You lose count of how many All-Australians they’ve got, so we knew what was coming. We didn’t fall for thinking they’d be off, we knew they’d be on us. Like us they’re fighting for their season and they’re a proud group of hard, tough inside midfielders and they got the better of our guys today.

We pride ourselves on our ability to win the ball inside and our guys, particularly in the first half, just got really badly beaten in there. They steadied in the second half but largely the contested damage was done and then we allowed Sydney to control it, which is not consistent with our season because we don’t, and we haven’t played that way.

Q: You see the discrepancy between last week and this week and do you sort of shake your head?

Scott: We know the fine line in the game, and the difference between winning a hard one-on-one contest and going forward versus losing it and chasing, it’s not that big a difference.

When you’ve got sides that are so capable, it’s a really fine line. We’re going to continue to see results like that over the course of the competition this season because it is a fine line.

We were on the wrong side of that fine line today and it turned into a pretty ugly result for us and a result that was unacceptable and so inconsistent and so different to what we’ve produced so far this year even in losses.

Q: You clearly missed Jarrad Waite today and tried Lachie Hansen up there at times. How did you see that forward line function?

Scott: Sydney put numbers behind the ball for large periods of the game and we certainly didn’t want to bomb the ball in there but we did on too many occasions.

A bit of it was the forward line but a fair bit of it was the way it was going in. Lachie looked ok early and looked pretty dangerous but our forwards didn’t get a look at it today.

Q: You mentioned the numbers (back), Sam Reid spent a fair bit of time behind the footy. Did you think about manning him up specifically?

Scott: We did think about that. Sydney are a counter-attacking team. We did push our numbers forward and Reid kept dropping further back.

We pushed them forward, we didn’t sit back. Some of it was just some mistakes on our behalf, sometimes we didn’t do what we wanted to do. At times we had seven forwards so if you go back and have a look at that, we did.

Q: When you’re that badly beaten inside mid, do you think Andrew Swallow might be in the mix to return next week?

Scott: Yeah he played well in the VFL. We’re under no illusions that he’d bounce back and he’d improve on some of the areas we asked him to focus on so he’ll be in the mix.

Q: How’d you rate Robbie Tarrant’s job on Buddy?

Scott: Super. When I said it (the result) could have been a lot worse, Robbie Tarrant kept it semi-respectable. It was a really dominant performance I thought.

Q: How’s Jy Simpkin’s shoulder?

Scott: We don’t know for sure, but it certainly looks like an AC joint. The doctors were keen to explore injecting it to see if they could get him back on but we weren’t comfortable doing that with a young player.

We didn’t give the doctors too many opportunities to try and get him back out there on the field. We just called it pretty early, because we’re not – even though he’s a really valuable player – going to put him at risk at such a young age.

Q: Is Jed Anderson fully fit?

Scott: Yep.