Luke Hodge

It looks like over the last 12 to 18 months, they've really come of age.

And a part of that probably could have been playing finals for the first time and losing a final that they probably should have won, realizing that you can't take it for granted.

It can go just as fast as it comes.

If not, it can go quicker.

So what I have liked with that and the fact that those three guys all, I think they kicked 10 goals between them on the weekend.

Tracy and Amos had four apiece and Voss had three or might have been the other way around.

But what I did see is they worked in connection.

There was a bit of play where Tracy took a mark in the forward line.

All of a sudden he's taken a mark on one back flank and then he does a chase down tackle on the other back flank all in the space of five minutes.

which shows me that, yes, they know what they have to do in front of the football, but they also know where they have to go to link up and to be there as an offensive threat, but also as a defensive threat when it's needed.

And the other thing that we're forgetting from the weekend was two of their three main midfielders were out.

You still had Sorong, who has been their class midfielder for the last six, seven years, and also Young, who's that little bit of X factor with that left foot.

That was the other part.

They've still got to squeeze into that side, which is going to be tough considering every person to a man was exceptional.

There's probably one part that I do have a little bit of a question mark over, and we saw it against Hawthorne a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday night.

It was when they had Ryan playing fullback on Gunston.

We're trying to play him back shoulder.

Gunston had, I think it was five in the first half, and we thought the way they moved the ball, they opened Freo up.

But as a good coaching staff and as good players that have hit a mature stage, they were able to change things in game.

They realised that Hawthorne wanted to switch the ball and keep ball in motion in that back half.