Demons coach Simon Goodwin spoke to the media post game.

What did you like about that?

I loved how he defended for a large part of the game. It was a contest game was strong all the way up until the last 10 minutes. You combine that with the younger players continuing to evolve in our football club. Some of the leaders really stepping as well. It’s a good night for the football club. I hope our supporters leave the MCG tonight proud of their group. They played the right way. The wet weather kicked in you handled those conditions a lot more effectively. Yeah, we’ve spent a bit of time on wet weather footy. It hasn’t been a forte for us last year. We spent time working on that. I thought we adapted to the conditions really well. I thought or contest and clearance work was strong. Obviously, not winning a lot of hit outs was challenging. I thought the midfield group did a great job enabling us to get some territory from that part of the game.

How did you see that ruck midfield dynamic without Max Gawn in there?

Different. It’s unpredictable for us. It’s unpredictable for the opposition. When you don’t have a dominant ruckman like Max, you play a bit differently for the opposition. That gave us an opportunity to do that. We always went in with a plan to share the load with Petty, van Rooyen and Turner. That was just finding out what was going to work for us on the night. I thought they did a great job. It’s something that obviously we had to deal with, missing Max. We’ll continue to find different ways to do it. As long as Max is out of the team we’ll continue to keep every option available to us every week. Obviously Tom was there and we’ve got the boys tonight. We’ll look at those guys again this week.

Pretty influential first quarter from Draper. How important when van Rooyen went into the ruck with the large share in the rest of the game?

It was important. Jacob has done a fair bit of ruck work before. Obviously, we wanted to get him in the forward line as much as we could. The night demanded that we needed him up around the ball a little more than we had planned. He did a fantastic job in the second quarter to help us just get the game on an even keel for us. I thought by the end of the game, both Petty and van Rooyen were doing a great job for us.

Jake Melksham, he seems to ease the pressure on Bayley Fritsch who can excel as well?

He’s coming in. He’s a leader. I spoke about him last week. He’s a leader of our football club. He hasn’t missed a beat since he came back. He did a power of work to get in that position. He’s good in the air and on the ground. He provides a stability for us, that a lot of younger players and front half of the ground to lead them and give them an opportunity. He’s doing a fantastic job for us.

You found something in the last fortnight with the forward nicks being more mobile. Is that a noticeable difference?

Probably the last eight weeks. We’re building cohesion. Melksham is the only change we’ve had to the front half of the ground. We’re able to play Turner, van Rooyen and Fritsch with a good chunk of game. Cohesion is big in sport. To play that group together you can see them evolve and grow together. Which is exciting for our football club. It’s been an area of the ground that we wanted to keep working and getting better at. We think we’ve got some talls and mediums that win the ball in the air. Also at ground level.

Any concerns over coughing up those last four goals of the game?

I don’t like it as a coach. But there’s no concerns. We just lost contest and lost centre bounce. We didn’t play safe. We continued to try and play the right way. And win the game. Clearly, Essendon were rolling the dice in terms of how they wanted to play forward of the ball. Credit to our boys. We kept playing. We didn’t get it on the scoreboard that we would have liked. We walk away with a good win.

Any injuries?

Pretty sure we’re all-clear at this stage. You never know what Monday might throw up. At the moment we’re all-

Any updates on Max Gawn?

He’s progressing well. We’re not going to put a time limit on it. We’re not sure. But he did have a good couple of days last few days. We’ll assess him mid week and see where he’s at. We’ll make that call later in the week.