Hawthorn ruckman Lloyd Meek said the Hawks took a lot of learnings out of their 51-point loss against Collingwood on Friday night.
Following an extensive review, the 27-year-old told Breakfast with Harf that all attention has now turned towards playing against the Western Bulldogs on Thursday night, with the team hitting the track on Tuesday morning.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO LLOYD MEEK ON BREAKFAST WITH HARF
On the Collingwood post-game review
“I think everyone was pretty frustrated. I think everyone knows that by no means was that our best. As you mentioned, Collingwood were very good, but we weren’t, so I think a lot of that came back to the players. We had a pretty clear plan that everyone believed in and we just didn’t implement it for whatever reason. Sometimes in footy, that happens. The leaders were really good in the review. Sam took a bit of a back step and the leaders stepped up. We had some really good chats about what we value and obviously some vision which was short and sharp. We wanted to try and move past it, learn as much as we can because you learn a lot from losses like that but yeah, onto the next.”
On recent form
“It’s no surprise that we haven’t been as consistent as we want to be and I think we all have that belief in our team, in our club and in our system and especially the players, we all back one another in and know that we have the talent and the ability to be up the top end of the year which is where we’re all striving to be. We’ve just had a few road bumps and gone away from the things that we value. Inconsistencies are frustrating but at the same time, it’s never a smooth ride, I feel like you can look at any premiership team in history and it’s never been a linear path straight to the top, there’s going to be ebs and flows along the way and unfortauntely, we’re just in one of those dips at the moment that we’re hopefully moving out of and ready to move forward.”
On the Bulldogs
“They’re obviously a good team in great form and we’ve had some good battles against them over the last couple of years, especially the backend of last year. They’ve got a lot of good midfielders so it’s going to be a good challenge for our mids to really step up and be able to hunt and pressure and get the tackle numbers up. As I said before, we know we’ve got the talent and the ability to go with them. Hopefully we can just apply the plan that the coaches are able to lay out for us. They’ve been really consistent with their planning. I think we can give it a red-hot crack and hopefully everyone’s looking forward to a good opportunity at Marvel in front of another big crowd in another big game for us.”
On the fixture ahead of bye
“We mentioned that it was a big month, but at the same time, we talk so much about being process-driven and backing in our routine and our system and our week-to-week. A lot of that is based on who you’re going to play on that weekend and we’ve had a couple of short breaks - a six-day break last week, a six-day break this week. We go pretty quickly from review, have a day off in the middle of the week, to begin (preparation for the next game). Today’s our main day and all eyes will be on the Bulldogs. I feel like that’s the big picture that we all know but in the process and what we’re actually looking to improve on each week, it’s very much eyes forward and keeping in the narrow because every game’s worth the same amount of points, even though some get hyped up a lot more than others.”
