THERE was certainly plenty to be pleased about for Brisbane coach Craig Starcevich after his side’s big win over Sydney on the weekend.

However, despite finding plenty of positives he still managed to find areas for his team to work on.

“We were happy with the pressure and happy with the scoring as a result of that pressure, that was pleasing,” Starcevich said.

“Still little moments in games where we switch off a bit defensively so that’s still a bit of a work in progress. I’ve got to sort of temper all that because we are rolling through with a lot of new personnel as well, so getting people playing together and knowing what’s required at certain times is still a bit of a work in progress.

“We’re getting there and obviously we generated enough forward movement to hit the scoreboard as well, so that was good.”

Despite having plenty of new faces, Starcevich was still able to change up his side to fill some gaps where necessary, including moving Shannon Campbell forward.

“It’s actually good to just have that up your sleeve,” he said. “I don’t think it was a resounding success but it was ok the way the forward line functioned.

“Shannon did a lot of hard work without necessarily reaping the rewards, but it’s just a nice thing to have up your sleeve if you need to do it again and with Taylor out for the week and Analee who’s new to the caper down that end of the ground. It was just good to get Shannon back there for a bit of calmness and a bit of experience, so that was the bit that helped us.”

When questioned if he just focused on winning the clearances instead of the hit outs because of the talent of Swans ruck Ally Morphett, Starcevich somewhat scoffed.

“Well I’m not sure if you ask Tahlia that she’ll be too rapt with that approach,” he said. “She’s a good ruckman Morphett, no doubt about that. She’s a heck of a talent, but I thought by half time Tahlia had worked out the best approach to combat her which was good. Gave us a little bit better look at it and ground level, but having said that when they did have ascendency it was the hit outs.”

“I don’t think it necessarily equates to clearances, I think we we’re on top at the start of the game in clearances, by the end we’ve just sort of narrowly come out in front.

“Our ground level players, I know Gardiner had 41 for them, but Ally has had another big night, Cathy’s speed and intensity around stoppages is always good, Belle the same, Ellie Hampson’s starting to get the gist of how we go about things, so there’s some pleasing things in there as well. Early in the match I thought we were ok there, there were some little lapses later on.”

One player whose influence Starcevich touched on post match was Dawes, who had another impressive performance on Sunday evening.

“Well you forget how young Belle is although she’s up around 50 games now,” Starcevich said. “So we have got some higher expectations of those types of players.

“They had a dozen of those out there tonight with 15 or less games, so that’s the gap you’ve got at the moment when you have expansion teams. So it’s ok to set the bar high for even our young ones who like I’ve said are up around 50. Belle’s one of those so we expect her to be as good defensively as she is offensively.

“One thing about Belle, you’re going to get an effort, she’s a workhorse, that was pleasing. She had a good run last week as well, both offensive and defensively.”