Player Column – Adam McIntosh First Semi-Final

WE were pretty disappointed with last Saturday’s performance. We thought we didn’t play anywhere near to our best footy and it was pretty frustrating because we showed in that last quarter when we do play well, we can put it on the scoreboard pretty quickly. It was a frustrating and disappointing day.

We knew at the start of the year that if East Perth or Peel made the finals that they could have 15 AFL-listed players so that’s not an issue we are worrying about it, and it’s certainly not an excuse for the way we played on Saturday. A lot of other people might be talking about that, but not us.

They probably beat us in the midfield, forward-line and back-line so that’s pretty disappointing. We have just come back to the training track this week and worked hard on it, and hopefully we’ll get a crack at either them or Subi next week if we’re able to get past Swan Districts on Sunday. We would like another crack at them especially though.

That was the first final I’ve been able to play in as well and it took me 98 games to experience it. Definitely the intensity especially early on was a lot higher. I had to watch the boys play finals last year and noticed the intensity lift, but when you are out there you notice it even more and especially in that first half it was pretty high.

We worked all year to finish top two to earn this double chance and this is what it’s good for. We know Swans won’t be easy this week, but we are pretty confident we can beat them if we play anywhere near the best. Hopefully we get the job done and we can reassess from there.

I watched Swans play on Sunday and they had a fairly different side in than when we played them here last time. They played well and showed a lot of heart, but we are confident that if we play our way we can beat any side on our day. We just have to focus more on ourselves and not them too much, and I’m sure we can take the win.

They are an interesting team to try and prepare for because they still have a lot of top end talent and then dangerous small forwards like Bennell and young Stewart. They are a bit of a different side to prepare for, but we don’t want to focus too much on them. If we can play our way I’m confident we can get the win.

Even on Saturday our crowd got pretty loud there towards the end and you noticed the crowd was louder than for a normal home and away game. I’m looking forward to playing at home again on Sunday and it’s good that I’ll get to play my 100th game at home as well even though I was hoping it was going to be away if we had won last week to be honest. I’m looking forward to it.

Before I go, I’ve heard that my name has been coming up on Higgo’s Heroes a bit of late and I thought I’d take the chance to address that. Firstly to Daniel Cabassi for calling me weird. It’s a bit strange really and that’s the first time I’ve ever heard him speak but I won’t forget that. And then Todd called me weird because of my hair. I think he’s just a bit jealous that he doesn’t have any himself.