Senior Coach Brad Scott offered an honest and measured assessment following the loss to Collingwood, describing a challenging review that forced the Club to confront performance gaps head‑on. 

While disappointed by the outcome particularly after recent signs of progress, he emphasised the importance of embracing uncomfortable moments as part of the team’s broader development journey.

Looking ahead, Brad reiterated his belief in the group’s competitiveness, the growth of young players in key roles, and the value of testing standards against elite opposition. 

All of the key talking points from this morning’s presser below.

Brad on… the Collingwood review

They're always a hard review and a hard watch when you perform below expectations and below, you know, both from a team and an individual perspective. What we expect as a Club, they're hard watches.

The thing about improvement usually comes from doing hard things, and you can choose to run away from it, not confront it, and that's the easy thing to do.

The hard thing to do is confront it and go through it in fine, excruciating detail, which is what we did.

So, it was probably our most uncomfortable wrap-up of a game this year.

It’s disappointing because maybe somewhat prematurely, we had some optimism about what we'd built the previous couple of weeks.

We win clearance around the ground by ten, but we lose centre bounce by 11, 20 to nine.

In the last quarter, we couldn't get any territory at all because we couldn't get the ball out of our defence. They were scoring, and every time we went back to the centre bounce, they won it.

Brad on… Archer Day‑Wicks and Saad El‑Hawli

It's a real credit to Archer that I'm saying I wish we had two of him at the moment, for a young player who was overlooked in the draft.

You know, we thought very highly of him as a capable player, but as I looked in the draft and we took him as a rookie, he’s become a really important part of our team at the moment.

These opportunities that we're able to give players tell you a lot, and it's good for individual players’ development. We potentially find things that we didn't know.

Playing in the backline hasn't been Saad’s position at any stage, really, in his footy career.

But in the practice game against Richmond, we threw him back and played him on the last line of defence, and he looked right at home.

So, we had at least a little look at what he could do on the last line. I thought he performed really well on a great player in Jamie Elliott.

Brad on… Ben McKay

Part of being in this environment, the AFL, when you perform lower than expectations, lower than you expect, and simple things, it’s heavily scrutinised, and you’re going to be scrutinised.

Every player in the competition has, you know, quote‑unquote confidence issues at various stages of their career.

And that's part of being in a cutthroat environment where you're playing against the very best every week.

When you're a key defender, you play on very good players every week.

So, is he just feeling great about himself? Probably not. But does that matter? Should that impact your performance? No, it shouldn't.

And that's what we work really hard on,  trying to bounce back from difficult situations.

Brad on… improvement and where the group is at

It's a well‑worn cliché now that improvement's very rarely linear.

You chip away, make progress, regress, take a step back, take two steps forward.

That's generally the way improvement works, but when you build a body of work over a period of time, we expect to improve over time.

You look at a lot of teams, they chip away over a period of time and then make a big jump.

We're still certainly in that phase of trying to improve the fundamentals and the simple things over time.

It's frustrating, we don't want to take a step back, but that's sometimes the reality of trying to improve from where we are.

Brad on… selection pressure

Well, I think we talk pretty regularly about the fact that we want selection pressure because we haven't had it.

I don't think we have the luxury that a lot of teams have at the moment of just making wholesale changes, because we're sort of already playing them.

You know, we go into Anzac Day with three draftees, and you know, a very obvious difference in where both teams are at.

I think we're giving young players huge opportunities in really important roles, and we think that will hold them in good stead.

Brad on… Isaac Kako’s injury

The bottom line is, he won’t be playing for this month or so at least.

These back stress fractures are not just at our Club, but right across the board are becoming a little bit too common.

You expect these types of injuries in 200‑centimetre fast bowlers, but not in 180‑centimetre small forwards.

Sullivan Robey came with the same injury before he set foot in the Club.

I think the loads on young players prior to the draft is probably something that we’d be keen to have a look at.

Brad on… Hussien El‑Achkar’s chances

On paper, he’s probably a good replacement (for Kako), but we're really keen to keep developing him in different parts of his game.

So, he’ll be in the mix, but certainly not guaranteed.

Brad on… Brisbane Lions challenge

The team are motivated, and I have belief in the competitiveness of the group. 

Certainly, the things we've looked at this week, they're going to get out and respond.

They're a good team anywhere, and we see it as an unbelievable opportunity to practise what we're doing against the very best.

They’re the number one clearance‑differential team in the comp, too, so it's not going to be easy.