LAST weekend wasn’t a great one for us as a club. We were really embarrassed with our performance against West Coast and we also lost a key player to injury in Justin Westhoff.

Westy is a massive loss for us. He’d kicked more goals than any other player at the club over the pre-season and round one combined.

He probably doesn’t get enough credit from outside the club, but not only does he kick goals, he also puts a huge amount of defensive pressure on the opposition when the ball is in our forward line.

Westy’s tackles and chases inside 50 are just as important for us as the goals he kicks. The operation to help fix his broken foot went well and, hopefully, we’ll have him back in between four and six weeks.

It will be interesting to see who the selectors replace him with.

There are a number of guys playing well in the SANFL that can come in, including Westy’s younger brother, Matthew. Matty played a few games last year and has shown a lot of potential.

There’s also Nick Salter – who also had a chance late last year – or the selectors could mix it up and bring in Wade Thompson or a smaller crumbing forward.

We’ve also got Brendon Lade in the side, who could push forward a bit more than he has in recent weeks.

It was really disappointing to lose against West Coast last week with so many guys playing milestone games for the club. I’m not really sure what the reason was.

Our preparation during the week and the feeling before the game was great. But the boys just really didn’t look into it and there was no effort or intensity in the first half.

You only have to be off that little bit and other teams will take advantage, just as West Coast did.

Bringing the right intensity to a game is not something you can really practise or train for. It’s all a mindset and it’s all in your head. We just have to make sure the boys come to the game switched on and ready to go.

We’ve spoken about the game a lot and this week will be a different story, I’m sure.

The team has copped a fair bit of criticism since the game, probably because a lot of people expected us to win.

But we don’t worry too much about outside expectations – we put more pressure on ourselves than anyone else.

After the disappointment of finishing 13th last year, everyone came back from the break with a bit of a chip on their shoulder. Most guys had a point to prove after a poor season.

With the help of the new fitness staff, like Cam Falloon and Andrew Lulham, and the new structured training program, it was one of the best pre-seasons we’ve ever had and that gives you a lot of confidence in itself.

Then we played pretty well throughout the pre-season competition and that’s when the footy world starts taking notice.

It’s good that people are talking us up as a top-eight or even top-four team, but we don’t worry about what they are saying.

We only worry about our expectations, internally, and trying to meet them.

You can definitely get sucked in if you read too much of what the media or people outside the club are saying.

As a young player, if you read the paper and read that people have got you in the top four, you can start to rate yourself a bit too highly and that’s why most of the older guys these days don’t read what’s written about them.

For a start, half of it’s not true and, secondly, it can give you a big head.

It also works the other way if someone has written something negative and untrue about you.

People can write whatever they want about us, but we’ll just try and let our performances do the talking from now on.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.