AFTER a frenetic finish to his side’s Elimination Final win on the weekend, Collingwood AFLW coach Steve Symonds was in a good mood, as his side scraped home against a valiant Western Bulldogs outfit at Victoria Park.

“Obviously [I am] really happy that we got through,” Symonds said.

“Three quarters of the game we really dominated and obviously the Dogs came back at us in the last quarter… we probably went into our shell a little bit and tried to save the game. We had some soldiers go down and we were trying to pull the pieces there together and got across the line.”

Having converted just a third of their scoring 15 scoring shots into six-pointers, the Magpies were in a winning position but for all their dominance, failed to truly put the result to bed. Symonds acknowledged the affect that had on the contest, and lauded his side’s ability to bounce back from a heavy loss to Brisbane the week prior.

“It’s a funny game, the scoreboard dictates what goes on and if we kick 10 goals five then we’re not in that position,” he said. “We had plenty of opportunities and we didn’t take them early on and left the door slightly open, and they came through it.

“I’m really pleased that we just shook off [the Brisbane loss] and reset again, learnt some things from that game and put things in place. I’m really pleased from that aspect of it and this group will always fight.”

A couple of young Pies really stood up for their side in the win. One of those was Eliza James, who booted four majors in the win, becoming the first AFLW player to do so. Fellow former Oakleigh Jo Lin also stood up, helping save the day for her side.

“Maybe [James] is a big stage player and if she keeps doing that every final that’ll be great,” Symonds said.

“[Lin’s] running patterns on-field are really, really strong. Outside of the season the one thing that we’ve taken away, yes we’ve had a couple of players out unavailable for the season, but our lower to mid-tier players have certainly stepped up this year and taken some steps moving forward.

“It puts us in a really good spot moving forward over the next couple of years so we’re really excited about that, and ‘Joey’ and ‘EJ’ are just two that really stepped up today.”

Symonds’ side now prepares to take on Adelaide away, and the Magpies mentor spoke of the challenge they have in front of them. Having faced the Crows only a few weeks ago, he has a clear plan on how to tackle the reigning premiers.

“[In the] first half the Crows were all over us…. we played way too slow,” Symonds recalled of the last time the two sides met.

“We’ve been a bit of a funny team with our ball movement. Early stages of the season we played a little bit too slow, then we had a few weeks where we played too fast and I felt against Brisbane we did some right things, but one thing we did take away [was] we did try to play too fast against them.

“Brisbane were already playing at high speed and we tried to go even faster and we weren’t capable of executing our decisions at that speed. So we wound it back a little bit, and we think that hopefully the learnings that we’ve got from going too slow, too fast that against Adelaide next week we’ll hopefully get the balance right.”

Collingwood’s semi-final clash bounces down on Saturday afternoon at Unley Oval.