Senior Coach Brad Scott said that the Bombers’ first quarter against Fremantle was the worst he’s seen from his side on the contested ball front. 

Although disappointed at the game being ‘won and lost’ in the opening half-hour, Scott was quick to heap praise on the Club’s young brigade (notably Sullivan Robey and Nate Caddy) for looking to spark a more intense response from the group.

Admitting that his youngsters need more help and can’t always be expected to shoulder the load, Scott is hoping his side can take some momentum from winning the second half as they look ahead to Dreamtime at the ‘G.

Scott on… a failure of the ‘non-negotiable’

We might look competitive if you look at all the numbers and you look across the course of the game, but the game was won and lost early in the first quarter. 

It wasn’t the first half, it was the first quarter in my view. Our contest was as poor as I've ever seen it.

You go in with numbers like minus-eight ground ball gets to plus-18 for the rest of the game, so the way we started the game was just nowhere near at the level it needs to be. 

I can reluctantly understand we're not at the level we need to be in a lot of parts of the game that we need to continue to improve on - but the contest is the non-negotiable part (of our game). 

Particularly against any opponent, but an opponent that's won eight in a row, when it's slippery conditions, the ball's going to be on the ground. It’s going to be in the contest. 

Scott on… the second half

Yeah, I had a stronger message at quarter time than I did at three quarter time.

The game looked different because of our effort in the contest and we turned around a lot of the things that really hurt us in the first quarter. So again, that says it's not about capability in the contest. It's just that we came out with a mindset of ‘hoping’ that we'd get it done. 

You can fight and there are some things that we continue to be excited about, our young players led us out in the third quarter and got us going. But we just chased the game from when we let it slip in the first quarter. 

You don't just click your fingers and say, ‘oh, let's go out and be better at that’. But what we can do is demand a better effort in the contest, which we did from quarter time onwards, but the damage was done. 

Scott on… Robey’s emergence, youngsters needing support 

He’s just such a great competitor. You know, to your point about the contest, you’ve got an 18-year-old who thrives in that scenario. 

I said during the week, it's unusual that you lose a teenager in Dyson Sharp and think that's a big loss for us because he's such a natural competitor.

You shouldn't be (as a team), looking to your 18-year-olds to lead you out of that but Sullivan just continues to, he understands the game incredibly well. He doesn't need to be told something twice, he just executes. 

The sky's the limit for where these guys can get to, but right now we need more support around our young players, which sounds a little bit back to front, doesn't it?  

We've had probably two games in Collingwood and Brisbane, where I think the scores from centre bounce were around 73 to three, in points differential. 

It’s a big part of the game that we need to continue to go to work on. Last week at the first centre bounce, it's Sharp and Robey in there. It's not the older guys. We'll continue to put those guys in really important roles for the team.  

I think that's great for them to develop but right now they're the guys who are getting it done for us. 

We're looking at guys who are in their first year in the leadership group, second year in a leadership group. There’s a long way for us to go in terms of our leadership for sure. I mean, we're not shying away from that, but the first part of leadership, it's not what you say, it’s what you actually do.

Holding up ends of the bargain, that’s the thing I'm looking for.  

Scott on… a word to the fans

The fans have been incredible and they see the last three years. They see the players that we've brought in, Roberts, Caddy, Kako, Farrow, Robey, Sharp. You keep reeling them off.

They want to win. Your fans want to come to the game to see their team win. But if you scratch one layer deeper, you can clearly see - blind Freddie can see - what we're trying to do. And it's frustrating in the short term, but we’re really clear in terms of what we're doing. 

They were too good for us early and we were very poor in the contest. The pleasing thing is we turned that around, but you know, we were never in the contest. If we could have that quarter back, I think the game would have looked a lot different.  

What an opportunity (against Richmond), to get out there again in a big game and compete.