CAPTAIN'S CALL: Solutions simple but not always easy

It might have looked like Goorj found one given how we pulled ourselves out of a hole to win two games in three days with barely any prep time in between, but it didn't come down to anything all that special.

Certainly Goorj wasn't mincing words after we lost to Brisbane, a game we had command of but let slip with some costly lapses.

We all know he's a passionate guy, and you only need to watch him on the sideline to know how animated he is. It's not much of a poker face.

This was different though. There was a hard edge to it not a lot of us had seen before. I've known Goorj a long time so it wasn't new to me, but some of the other guys were probably a bit stunned.

Apart from being the ultimate winner and a competitor, Goorj is also a passionate teacher of the game. When we've hit a low point at other times this year, he's often seen it as a teaching moment.

After that game, he knew, and we knew, this wasn't one of those moments. It wasn't stripping paint off the walls type stuff, but we knew in no uncertain terms that we'd let ourselves down.

It really hit home that we were at a critical point. We came into that stretch of three games at home knowing we'd need to win at least two of the three - particularly with a Perth-Melbourne double looming this week.

Dropping that first one put us in a tough position. In some other sports, you might get a whole week to look it over, think it over, and then put some things in place at practice. It's not a luxury you always get in our sport, in this season more than any other.

Why I say there wasn't a magic wand getting waved around is that we didn't go looking for some miracle solution. As disappointing as that Brisbane performance was, we didn't play terribly the whole game.

The reality is we probably weren't as bad as it seemed against the Bullets and probably not as good as it seemed against the Phoenix. We just found something in that game when we needed to. The game before was the opposite.

It's one of the toughest wins I've had, and certainly big on character, not just coming off a loss and turning it around quickly, but doing it against a team that's previously had our number.

It really showed there is no quit in this group. If there was, it would have come to the surface when we were down 13 in the fourth quarter. We'd lost a bunch in a row and the wheels could really have come off there, but I was really impressed with how we locked into that game and didn't let it go.

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It wasn't our prettiest win but it was a win we needed. Backing it up was just as tough but we've hit similar points at different stages of the season where we come to the end of a touch stretch. Goorj has always been good in those situations and just told us 'all right, empty the tank here and we get a rest. Give it everything you've got'.

It's something I re-iterated before tip-off, we had to go out and leave everything on the court. Cairns are one of the teams we need to beat, you can't drop a game at home against a team towards the bottom of the ladder. If we want to stay in the four and make a run at the playoffs, it wasn't a game we could afford to lose.

It wasn't a game that will go down as one of the great Hawks wins but, on the back of the two previous games in such a short time, it was an impressive win.

It doesn't get any easier playing Perth and Melbourne United on the road in 48 hours this weekend, but it's a challenge we faced earlier in the season coming out of the hub. We've played better against Melbourne this season than we have against Perth, who are obviously a different beast at home, but no team's unbeatable.

Adelaide showed that last week and we'll go in with the same focus as we do every game, getting what we do right and take it one game at a time. It's a mentality that's served us well this season, especially those times when we've been doing it tough.