Huddo, the kicking for goal wasn’t great the other night – isn’t that area your forte?
Paul Hudson: Well, yeah, it’s my forte. When you do a review you look at all the areas and it was a part of the game that hurt us, unfortunately. I think it’s infectious. It’s funny, our reserves kicked the same way. They kicked 13.21.
Our ruckman (Josh Fraser) had four shots down there, Leigh Brown as well who can basically play anywhere for us, and they both kicked 1.3. And also the guy who I’d put my house on at the club, Tarkyn Lockyer, who I reckon has got a beautiful kicking action, he ends up kicking 1.3, although two of those were snaps.
Can the misses be put down to anything or was it just an off night?
If you look at history, it’s just an off night. Not pumping my own tyres up but when I played I had nights like that as well, but then the next week you’d come out and you’d kick accurately because you’d address it and keep working at it. Eight or nine times out of 10 you’re going to kick reasonably well if you put the time and effort in.
Have you guys worked on goalkicking a bit more ahead of Friday night’s game against Brisbane?
Probably an extra 10 or 15 minutes. But more players [have been] coming and I’ve been focusing more on the midfielders. Your true forward will always get his work in throughout the week so I’ve just addressed, even some backline players, that’s all that’s been different.
And this week you come up against a side and club that you, in particular, are pretty familiar with?
Having spent the last two years up there I know a few of them. However having a look at some vision, I’m sure Vossy’s got them playing a different brand of footy.
I might know some information about some of the players, and Brad Scott’s here as well and we all know his history with Brisbane, so we feel that we know the people within the club, but we’re yet to experience a Michael Voss game plan.
On paper it looks like being a case of simply trying to stop the two-pronged attack of Jonathan Brown and Daniel Bradshaw – is that a fair call?
Well if we can shut those two down you’ve minimised a lot of their scoring power. Every club looks at that and every club that Brisbane’s come up against has dealt with a different way of doing that.
Did you work pretty closely with those two guys when you were up there and, if so, does that help in planning their downfall this weekend?
I was working with the forwards in that area and they both kicked 70 goals plus and Browny won the Coleman. This week we’re hoping that the couple of guys that we play on them do their job and I think our guys have matured enough to be able to beat them one-on-one. If we can match them in the air we might be able to expose them when the ball hits the ground and that’s the faith that we’re putting in our backline players.
This week Collingwood’s likely to be without two or three from last week’s team. Is it a big problem making several changes from one week to the next?
I don’t think so. We performed admirably through the NAB Cup when we had different guys playing. Our list has been very strong and a couple of opportunities could present for some guys that have been doing reasonably well in the twos.
Who are some of the guys in line for a call-up?
The reserves had a good win over Geelong and I’d say Rocca, Corrie, Stanley, Cook and young Steele Sidebottom would be right in the mix, even Chris Bryan could come into contention. I mean everyone talks about Anthony Rocca but he (Bryan) could have kicked eight goals.
There are quite a few names you could throw up. There are about eight guys who have put their hand up to stake a place in the side, and this could be the best thing ever for the football club in that those guys get given a chance and it just makes it that much harder [for the others to get back in]. When you’ve got a strong list from reserve-grade level, you can’t ask for much more.
