Player Column – Adam McIntosh Round 13

IT is fair to say last week was an interesting one for us as a team and two games within five days couldn’t have turned out too much different after our big win in the derby and then a disappointing loss to Peel on Saturday.

We obviously couldn’t have been too much happier with the way things went in the derby. It's the biggest win I've been part of and to do it on such a big day of the season in front of a good crowd was something that was very enjoyable for us all.

But we knew we had to back up quickly on Saturday against Peel and that couldn’t have turned out much more different for us. We had kicked 10 goals in the first quarter in the derby, but Peel kicked five against us in the first quarter on Saturday and 10 for the first half to be pretty much eight goals in front. We did fight back and gave ourselves a chance late in the game when we got scores level, but then we just seemed to stop again and that was disappointing.

As good as the derby win was not much more than a week ago, now after losing on Saturday we have lost three of our last four and you could say we are in a bit of a slump considering that. I'm not sure if some of us went into the game on Saturday just expecting our form from the derby to continue or what happened, but we just can't afford to take any games lightly if we want to get things back on track and that's what we need to do this week.

You could say that we could have easily won two of those three games we've lost so things aren’t quick as bad as that makes it sound, but the fact is we've lost those games and there are a few little things that we can fix up to try and get back on track and I'm confident we're going to be able to do that.

We do seem to play well as a team up at Joondalup so we are looking forward to getting back there this Saturday. I actually missed the last time we played last year, it was the first game after I got injured, but we had a good win there and we do have a really good record up there. I'm not sure what exactly it is, but it's a good, big ground and it probably really suits the way we play a fair bit.

Having said that, we know West Perth will be tough. They have been in some good form and just because we've done well against them lately and up at Joondalup, doesn’t mean it's automatically going to happen again this week.

For whatever reason, we do seem to play well against them. We obviously had a really good win against them earlier this season and then going back to last year in the finals and earlier in the year. I'm not sure how they will respond to that and if they will try to do anything different against us, but it does give us confidence that if we're playing at our best we know they are a team we can play well against.

But equally we know that they are in good form and will be desperate to turn things around against us, and that they are more than capable of doing it if we aren’t at our best and if we allow them to play the way they like.

In terms of the season, it's probably the biggest game we've played as well. After we've lost three of the last four games, we need to win if we want to stay in second spot or else they can take it off us. It's a massive game for us and I'm confident we'll all be ready to go and play well come Saturday.

Personally I'm feeling pretty good and I'm actually starting to feel like I'm going back to normal a little bit after missing so much of last year. For the first time all year in the last couple of weeks I feel like I've been able to get that gut running back and now hopefully I can keep building on that for the rest of the season starting this Saturday.