Magpies coach Craig McRae spoke to the media post game.

After that crazy first three goals, the match was a bit of an arm wrestle for an extended period, but you fell away at the end?

Probably something we will review hard. When we go three goals in three or four minutes or whatever it is, the margin was pretty much that in the end. A bit reflective of what we just spoke about. Losing a lot of territory at the minute, centre bounces were a big one, 16-6 or something like that. -- a big cost. So this is the game, isn’t it? You’ve got to be good at everything at times. Not really bad... Well, you’ve got to be not really bad at phases of the game. You’ve got to fight. 16-6 from goals and turnouts wasn’t great tonight.

Following on from last week whereas in the did that really well with the marking game, John is a plus seven with marks and stunted your running game, how did you see that?

That’s interesting, because they kicked the ball around and didn’t really go anywhere and if anything, they kicked it back to us. There was no territory gain from it. But this is the thing we way up. For three -- weigh-in -- weigh up. It was relatively low scoring from that phase but potentially a cost of energy. Whether or not, we got that right or not is something we will reflect on.

With Nick Daicos was it a cocky to hamstring in the second quarter?

I think at this time of year everyone is carrying something. Everyone get into the line to play, this is the reality of this long season everyone is living. Be very surprised if not everyone has got something.

Your injury list has been well documented. Is it critical mass with... Do you feel like it’s catching up a bit? How do you see it?

I do feel like there’s a little bit of... A dark cloud at times over us. I said it to the players this week. We can’t live in that space. Like Josh Carmichael retiring, you know. Those things. We’ve got to be able to celebrate and support but also keep moving. You know, Brody Mihocek and these guys, we are not here to make excuses. Four major parts of the night, we look like watchers. Early on our pressure was really good and in other phases we had minus 20 inside 50s. I’m not sure other teams are going to bode well if that’s one of your key indicators. So I’d just want to be rid of excuse. I don’t want to be in that space. We fought to the last second and kicked the last goal of the game. This is who we are. When we perform better in other parts of our game, that last second generally might mean a bit more. So that is a challenge.

Darcy Cameron coming off from the ruck, where did you see the midfield battle being lost?

No doubt their clearance stuff was dominant. Credit to Dangerfield, looked really dangerous and other parts of their game really flowed full clearance. You can’t give minus 20 inside 50s to Geelong. They are a really dangerous forward line, lots of weapons down there. And again, Geelong’s method around stoppages was better than ours tonight. Is it a simple fix, from the stoppages perspective? I live in the mindset that our best days tomorrow. I know Hayden Skipworth is one of the best coaches that we’ve got and arguably at his craft he is a fantastic coach and I know how hard he works on this phase of our game. He won’t stand still. Easy fixes is a difficult word in this game, but certainly we will strive and aim to be better.

In the third quarter, Tyson Stengle, the ball seemed to get out of his grasp and it looked like he was tackled and could be dropping the ball but went on to kick the goal, how do you see that?

A lot of critical moments. There was a lot of critical moments. There was a lot of critical moments. You go -- through all these little moments. Will takes a mark and then slips over. There are a lot of critical moments. But to make one more than others, it’s hard to say.