You must be pretty impressed with that. How happy were you with the way that the guys started tonight?

Yeah, I thought it was a sensational start of the game. I thought the mids got on top of clearance and centre bounce. They gave us great ascendancy in the game. Forward pressure was really strong. We were able to score early in the game which gave us a really good buffer and enabled us to dictate how the rest of the game was played. That was really pleasing to get off to that fast start. It is something we have been working on the last few weeks and it went a long way to winning the game.

Was that your almost complete performance of the year? I know you put it together in quarters and halves. Did you really feel tonight that was just a four-quarter performance?

Yeah, I think just in terms of the opposition, when you’re playing against a quality side, their ability to transition the ball from inside to outside has been really strong. So our ability to defend strongly and win enough contests and be fishing going forward was clearly on show for the majority of the night. I was just really proud of the boys, the way they went about it. It wasn’t the perfect week, but the ability to deal with that, maturity shown and ability to execute what we were trying to do was outstanding. That’s clearly one of the best performances for the year.

It really looked like your pressure and the way you set up defensively around the ground really forced the Bulldogs, regarded as one of the best users of the ball in the comp, into many, many turnovers and skill errors. Was that perhaps the most pleasing aspect of the whole performance?

It’s probably something we’ve been working on and become part of our DNA of how we play, our ability to defend. Last week against Adelaide, we were certainly not the level of where we wanted to be. There was an area of our game where we wanted to bounce back in and we knew the Bulldogs were a team that wanted to move the ball a certain way and our ability to defend the most dangerous areas and put them into spots they didn’t want to be enabled us to defend really strongly behind the ball. So it was a really pleasing effort from that side of things and continues our belief in our ability to play a certain way and our belief and our game style. I’m sure our supporters that are at home watching tonight are starting to really see what the Melbourne DNA is and that was on show on the biggest stage, which is great.

There seemed to be a reluctance on the part of the Bulldogs to kick down the line particularly in the first quarter. Did you anticipate that might be a strategy on their part or just have to adjust accordingly?

Yeah, that’s how they’ve played. They’ve been the number one team to score through the corridor. They do like to switch the ball. We understood that in terms of how they played and how we wanted to set up defensively. With a team like Western Bulldogs, you have to be ready for everything. They can play in multiple ways. That’s why they’re a good side. They execute the areas that we wanted to, it’s really strong.

How hard was it to plan given the interruptions during the week?

Yeah, it was different. Doing a team meeting on Zoom yesterday was a new experience. Wasn’t getting a lot of feedback from the boys, but must have gone OK. Yeah, look, it was different. One thing that’s been - we’ve been really working towards is just being ready for anything. No-one knows what the situation is you’re going to face and we want to be a team that’s just mature enough to handle anything that comes our way.

For us this week, we had no last training session. The guys were in isolation. They weren’t allowed out of their house for the last, you know, 24 hours. Yeah, it was different, but we do want to make that as an excuse. We wanted to make sure we prepared as best we could and come out and put on a performance that we’re really proud of. I think that just shows the maturity of the group at the moment.