Assistant coach, Ashley Prescott, believes the Bombers took several positive steps forward in their improved performance against Brisbane despite only walking away with two premiership points.
Speaking on Weekend Rewind, Prescott said that whilst the ‘one percenters’ cost them a victory there is plenty to take away from the game and many lessons learnt for the future.
“I think there was a very empty feeling for all those involved after the game. A draw is better than losing but it is not a result that we wanted,” he said.
“That game is the one that got away from us, we had a pretty good third quarter and chipped away in the last quarter too but some fundamental mistakes in the last few minutes cost us a win.
“We’ve been discussing the one-percenters; they are the difference between a win, draw or loss. We spoke about it this morning and the only thing you can say after a disappointment like a draw is what we can learn from it.
“If we can learn from these actions hopefully when we are presented in those situations again we will make the right decisions.
“Late in the game when we were kicking out from full back, we weren’t able to hit a target when there wasn’t much time on the clock.
“Brisbane went into a zone so we had the opportunity to wind down a little bit of time but we released the ball long and created a forward stoppage which cost us.
“We take all those little things into account as we should have been able to ice the clock and win the game.
“There were a lot of positives especially from a selection point of view, bringing in players like Jarrod Atkinson and Bachar Houli, playing Kyle Reimers across half back was a real positive and so was the form of Courtenay Dempsey.
“I think our forward line whilst it wasn’t polished and we didn’t kick some of those easy goals that we should have, they worked really hard and held the ball in.
“Adam McPhee worked really hard across half forward, Hurley’s presence was excellent and I think Neagle has kicked six goals in the past two weeks, he is continuing to improve.
“Across the board there was a lot of improvement but we have to make sure it just doesn’t stay that way - we need to keep improving that and keep taking steps forward.”
After a tough week off-field, Prescott was impressed with the performance of Nathan Lovett-Murray.
“Nathan was brilliant on Saturday night, we weren’t concerned with him going into the game probably because of the way he presented himself at the club during the week,” he said.
