Stinear on Geelong's progression this year

We had our greatest ever defeat in my first start coaching the team, so it has been nice that we have been able to progress since then and gain a bit of momentum.

I think we have been hopeful to be in a position like this, but it has more just been the constant improvement of players, the team and our program. Just continuing to evolve, so it has been nice that that has resulted in some wins and put us in this position.

I think our success over hopefully the next five or six weeks will be determined by our ability to keep our head down and keep evolving.

We want to keep staying present and just looking to get better every day, so that has been a large part of the success to date. I think that will be a key factor going forward. 

Stinear on returning to Finals

At the start of the season, we definitely wanted to return to Finals.

For the players, there is a lot of experience in the group and they have tasted Finals before, so they were pretty determined to get back there. So that was definitely something we wanted to do as a program.

But then once you get going, you want to be in Finals, winning Finals and you want to be in a position to contend. If you haven't got that mindset, then you are probably in the wrong industry.

Now that we have given ourselves that opportunity, it is now about how we give ourselves the best opportunity to succeed in that. The opportunity to do that is to stick to what we have been doing, and the process of getting after it. Looking to improve individually, how you can help the team with your role and then as a team, that will keep evolving.

To play Fremantle tomorrow is a great opportunity for us to be challenged, to see if we can take their game away from them. Then we can see if we can have our game flourish against a strong team. 

Stinear on the next two weeks

It is an ideal finish to our season.

Fremantle have probably had some mixed form, but their best footy, I believe is really good. They probably had tough conditions the last two weeks, contending with a lot of wind.

They did well to get the win last week, they kept getting better the longer the game went.

Their game against North Melbourne was really strong, in the contest and then on the outside.

We will definitely have our hands full tomorrow, but we believe our best footy is good enough and stacks up. That is our opportunity tomorrow. 

Stinear on the improved scoring power

Players can have all the credit for that.

As a coaching group, it is probably clarity around how we want to move the ball and how we want to play. It then allows players to play on instinct a little bit more, to create and connect together.

There are a lot of players in the team that have played a lot of footy together, sharing some really strong connections off-field and then you get to see that on-field. A number of our forwards have been finishing really well.

I would say from a coaching group, probably just getting out of the way and giving the players clarity on what we want to do. Then giving them the space to go out and do it.

I think what is pleasing is that there have been long periods where we haven't been able to score, but players don't get frustrated or worried about that.

They have been able to get back to our method and trust that those opportunities will come, if we can get our method right.