It was tough. It was error-ridden. It was U-G-L-Y. It was 4 points. I don't believe completely in the expression 'all that matters is the result' but we needed to win and we did. We move to 3-4; 1 win outside the top 8, 2 wins outside of top 4 and 3 wins out of the top 2.
So 4 points. But the performance wasn't anything worthy of celebration. If we were playing a bona fide top 4 side we would've lost handily. Unless that team is Port Adelaide, because they've well and truly started their slide which should've bloody started against us. But we've moved on from that. Well 'we' have, 'me' not so much.
Anyway, yes it wasn't a great performance. The disposal wasn't very clean. There were several very poor turnovers. The ruck dominance of the All-Australian duo, Naitanui especially, wasn't capitalised on to full effect. Brisbane obviously tried very hard. They have a tendency to test us in recent times and perhaps there's something about them that we find hard to dominate. Because we just couldn't get a run on. It wasn't one of those games where we completely turned off for one quarter. That's promising. I think the effort was pretty consistent. Yet the application wasn't.
However, and here's the promising thing, we kept plugging away. Even after 3 quarters where we couldn't for the life of us build a lead, even after they hit the front with 10-15 minutes left, we continued to persevere. In the end, we got the goals we needed to get. 26 points is an extremely misleading margin. But we finished the stronger side and that's one of the only times you can say that this season.
Overall, it was the best win of the season. It's the only win where we were legitimately challenged for the entire game and still prevailed. That's 2 solid weeks of football in a row. North on Friday night is certainly a tougher test. They have played far better than their 3 wins suggest. Unlike us.
It's a big game and one we simply, yes again, 'must win'....
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