COLLINGWOOD coach Steve Symonds described his side’s 32-point victory over the GWS Giants as a “solid win”, with the Magpies retaining fourth spot following the win. Post-game, Symonds said his team needed to improve their accuracy, but were controlling play well in games.

“I’m really happy with the brand that we’re trying to play at the moment” he said. “We started playing a big faster, a little more attacking with territory dominance, we had the ball in the front half a lot today. It gave ourselves plenty of opportunities, I think we were up near the 40 odd inside 50s again, which is nice.

“But it’s been a similar story the last couple of weeks, we’re obviously not hitting the score board as far as kicking goals and we’re kicking a lot of points at the moment. We just need reward for effort to try and fix that area up.”

Symonds mentioned whilst he was impressed with the sharing load of the footy, there were some key players who stood out in his side’s victory.

“It’s a tough one. I thought we had a good balance right across all our list today and I thought everyone played well. I really liked Lauren Brazzale’s game off half-back today, I thought she was strong. Lauren Butler continued to be strong across half back again. Chloe Molloy was really good in the midfield, and then obviously we pushed her forward a little bit back in the game again and she looked dangerous there.

“It was a pretty even contribution across the board…. Jaimee Lambert found a little bit of the ball again and is getting back to some form and her body is starting a little bit better as well by each week. Overall, it was a good team performance.”

Symonds also praised the efforts of his skipper Steph Chiocci in her milestone 50th match.

“Obviously yeah she had the week off, to come back into it and she had some moments where she was a bit rusty, but she had some really good moments as well, so it was great for her to kick a goal and enjoy the day. She has been such a great leader for our program and the players really respect her and the way she goes about things, so it was great to get out there a play a good game for her,” Symonds said.

With a couple rounds left in the regular season left and a chance to finish in the top four come finals time, Symonds mentioned the side’s upcoming match against Fremantle in Perth on Sunday.

“We’ll set ourselves now, obviously the next 24 hours we’ll enjoy the win. We always enjoy our wins for the first 24 hours and then we’ll set ourselves for Freo,” Symonds said.

“We know Freo will be ready for us, we’ve always had some really good battles against Freo, who we’re looking forward to playing them and our first trip away. We actually enjoy going away on away trips. We’ve got some many players who don’t spend a lot of time inside the program with each other because we’re so fast, everything’s going so fast all the time.

“It’ll be good to get over there, spend a couple of days together, have a bit of bonding while we’re over there and hopefully put up a good performance.”