Inconsistency has plagued the club for much of the year but it's not something the players like to dwell on.
“I think the self-belief, especially over the last couple of months, you can just see it building,” Wright told the Herald Sun.
“The way we work as a team now is totally different."
Providing some constructive and sometimes blunt feedback is the key according to the defender.
“During the year we’ve taken a hard line on one or two players a week that aren’t playing the sort of footy that we want.
“I think being really harsh on those things and holding high expectations at training is really what’s turned it around.”
Wright knows only too well what it feels like to be on the receiving end of such criticism. Struggling to find regular role at the start of the year, the 24-year-old was thrown from the forward-line to the back-line and even down to the VFL.
“I played forward in Round 1 and struggled to adapt to that position after training predominantly as a half-back during the pre-season,” Wright said.
“But that’s the way the coaches saw it, we hadn’t quite figured out our forward structure by then."
The situation caused some doubt and unease for Wright, so he went straight to the top to find out what he needed to do.
“I sat down with Scotty (coach Brad Scott) after that and we pretty much decided that half-back is my position and so if it took me one week, six weeks, whatever, to get back in the side then when I did come back in I was just going to try and take that chance.”
That meant weekly chats with the head coach.
“Personally I’d much rather Scotty tell me exactly what he thinks, no beating around the bush, so I can go and work on the deficiencies I need to improve on,” he said.
“I pestered him every week. I was in his office every week until I got back in to the side and he was hating it. I just kept pushing him to give me more about what I needed to work on.”
With eight consecutive matches under his belt, the persistence has paid off.
“But I’m glad I did that now because those honest conversations have turned my season around.”
