IN A NEW weekly addition we hear from each of the 18 coaches in the AFL Women’s and take a snippet of what they took from their respective matches.

Carlton 6.9 (45) def. Collingwood 3.3 (21)

Carlton coach Matthew Buck:

“We’ve always spoke contest and defence and they were always going to be the first thing. “If you chase five rabbits you catch none, so we get those areas right and then we’ve started to add our offensive layer this time.

“We saw glimpses of them which were great, but we’ll need to see more of those going into the future. Never a happy coach, but there’s some great stuff that we really enjoyed, but we’ll continue to that.”

Collingwood coach Sam Wright:

“I think when we talk about stoppage we don’t just talk about inside the stoppage. “It’s about being connected ahead of the ball too. “I thought we showed patches today, I think that’s the really disappointing thing, not just for me, but disappointed for the girls.

“We only saw patches tonight and part of that is stoppage you can actually set up on your terms, we didn’t quite get it right.”

West Coast 5.5 (35) def. Gold Coast 2.8 (20)

West Coast coach Daisy Pearce:

“One of our real positives was our decision making to be able to just take the sting out of the game when we’d been going hard and needed a bit of energy, or we were in dangerous parts of the ground ourselves. “I thought they made those decisions well, but with the way we’ve got our side set up, we want to add a bit of speed and creativity, and a bit of heart in your throat when it gets to 70m out, so I think they found that balance pretty well for most of the game.”

Gold Coast coach Rhyce Shaw:

“I know the result’s not what we wanted but I was just so pleased with the performance of our players and our team. We’re on a journey at the moment and we’re building and building each and every week and we continue to do that.

“I think today was another step for us and the girls were just fantastic and credit to West Coast, they played a really good game and took their moments when they had the opportunity, but i just thought we did a fantastic job and controlled periods of the game and just couldn’t hit the scoreboard the right way. I think it was a really good building block for us.”

Sydney 8.10 (58) def. Richmond 5.8 (38)

Sydney coach Scott Gowans:

“I think it’s a great start to the season, it’s step one for us and it’s a tick and with a bit of work to do as well on some things and that’s the best thing. “If you win and you’ve given your best, it’s just different winning and then having a lot to improve and I thought Richmond really took the game up to us, their contested stuff was so good. “But we lifted, and that’s what good sides do and we just need to do it consistently.”

Richmond coach Ryan Ferguson:

“We just made some really poor decisions in attack and it really allowed them to catapult back on turnover. “I thought our attack hurt our defence for a patch there early in the third.”

“A lot of the rest of the game was still a strong armwrestle, but I thought we just lost our nerve a little bit after that and started to get away from our game and that allowed them to get even more ascendancy so reset at three quarter time and came out strong in the fourth, but that backend of the third.”

Geelong 3.3 (21) def. by North Melbourne 8.3 (51)

Geelong coach Dan Lowther:

“We went into the game knowing it was going to be really tough and it showed. “It was a really see-saw (contest), pretty dour to be honest, like something we saw from a couple of years ago with that arm-wrestle and low score, but credit to both teams we were in the contest and they made it hard to score. “I thought our third quarter was our best quarter in terms of our pressure applied, time in forward half. We just couldn’t get two or three metres of space to put that scoreboard pressure on that would have made it all worth it.”

North Melbourne coach Darren Crocker:

“I think we couldn’t have had a better game for Round 1. “The conditions obviously made it quite challenging, but in the first half we had the game looking like a game that we’d like it to look like, we just weren’t gettin the reward for effort or being able to hit the scoreboard. “Geelong to their credit really challenged us in that third quarter, made it really difficult for us to get it out of their forward half, and then the way the players responded in the last quarter was excellent.”

GWS Giants 3.11 (29) def. by Essendon 13.7 (85)

GWS coach Cam Bernasconi:

“I just thought we made some really poor decisions and some really poor fundamentals. “I think in the first quarter we started really well and had an opportunity to actually get a really good start and nearly kick away, but just our inability to convert then just opens the door and then we just got beaten in the hunt. “From there it got a little bit scrappier and they just fought harder than we did.”

Essendon coach Nat Wood:

“You spend all preseason, you think you’re improving and adapting your gameplan and introducing new players in but never quite sure how it’s going to stack up against people who play a bit differently. I thought GWS there were different passages in play where they had good field position and good spread, but it was terrific to see our players to really work through some moments and wrestle back some of the ascendancy and get some good efficiency going forward.”

Western Bulldogs 1.8 (14) def. by Melbourne 9.8 (62)

Western Bulldogs coach Tam Hyett:

“I thought we had our opportunities, like we had a couple of posters. Probably slow entries, we would have liked to have gone a little bit faster in the second half with our entries and we showed when we did one-on-one we’re quite competitive, but we just allowed them to get numbers back and that doesn’t help when you’re trying to hit the scoreboard.”

Melbourne coach Mick Stinear:

“It was good to see the players get reward for a lot of hard work in the off-season. “It’s a fair while to wait to be back. “It was nice on Thursday night to have women’s footy back on the screens at home. “It was good to get our time tonight and bank the four points, but just good to transfer the work in the preseason to in-season form and like I said, get that reward for effort.

“You get a lot of energy out of seeing the players do what they do best and putting their skills on display and it was nice in that second half for things to open up a little bit and see what this group was capable of doing.”

Brisbane 3.11 (29) def. by Hawthorn 4.9 (33)

Brisbane coach Craig Starcevich:

“I think both teams were a bit fumbly, it was a little bit blowy today and that might have added to it, but it was a pretty scrappy affair really. “Probably not the best exhibition of what our league’s about between two decent teams, but despite all of that we were close enough in the end with the chance to pinch it but didn’t quite get there.”

Hawthorn coach Daniel Webster:

“We know they’re one of the best teams in the competition. “They’re in a position that we aspire to be. To come up here Round 1 it’s always difficult, it’s obviously a little bit warmer and we were cramping a bit at the end. It’s going to be phenomenal for us in terms of knowing if you can beat Brisbane in Brisbane, you can beat anyone so it’s a good confidence booster for us.””

St Kilda 6.5 (41) def. Adelaide 2.7 (19)

St Kilda coach Nick Dal Santo:

“We knew today would be a huge challenge, which it really was, but I’m really pleased with the outcome. It’s been a massive off-season for all teams. I asked a few of the girls ‘when did you start training?’ not ‘when did you come back to the club?’ and they said ‘it was in about November’, so that’s roughly about nine months that they’ve been training in some capacity, so it’s really pleasing to put all that work into about 80 minutes of what you get to see today and being able to have the feeling of winning today.”

Adelaide coach Matthew Clarke:

“It was a disappointing performance. “Ultimately we had 50 inside 50s for a couple of goals which is probably far from ideal, so clearly the efficiency in the first half, but then I thought in the third quarter, St Kilda just beat us up at the contest and really went to work and owned the game in that little period and clearly they took their chances and we didn’t, so pretty disappointing performance.”

Port Adelaide 3.6 (24) def. by Fremantle 7.4 (46)

Port Adelaide coach Lauren Arnell:

“I think obviously the margin blew out in the last couple of minutes, I don’t think it was a 22-point game. But credit to Freo they were absolutely the best team. I thought we had an opportunity to win probably six or seven minutes to go and didn’t take that opportunity, so really well done by Fremantle.”

Fremantle coach Lisa Webb:

“I thought they were really impressive and we knew that they were going to come and they came really hard. “Certainly was worried for a while there, we obviously got two in a quick space that helped us a bit. “They’re a terrific team, they always have been, and when they beat hawthorn last year, we knew they were going to be a tough team so we’re really glad to get the points over them.”