ELISE O’Dea had more than a good outing at Victoria Park on Saturday afternoon.
The Demon midfielder racked up 26 disposals, five tackles and a brilliant goal against Collingwood, putting together one of the best individual performances of the season.
But the co-captain isn’t interested in individual accolades and is always looking to improve.
“I was just rapt I could contribute,” O’Dea told Melbourne Media.
“I’ll just take it, I’ll be rapt but I can definitely tell you there was a lot of times that I butchered the footy, so I’ve got to go back and work on that as well.”
After putting in the hard yards all pre-season, O’Dea was stoked for her side to get on the winners list in Round 2.
“The girls are really rapt,” she said.
“It’s nice to finally get some reward for effort.
“It’s hard when you know how hard the girls have worked and we went down last week.
“I’m super proud of how we bounced back and our preparation throughout the week – we really came out and did a job today and got the result.”
Despite an enthralling battle with the Dockers last week, Melbourne conceded 59 points, making defence a major focus for the side this round.
“We spoke about how we leaked a lot of goals last week and how it was a team effort to get back and help the defence,” O’Dea said.
“It’s not just all on them to stop the ball so we tried as a team to help out the defence and we did that by just trying to attack as much as possible today and lock it in our forward half.”
The Demons defensive group functioned perfectly on Saturday, conceding just one major for the entire afternoon.
And after restricting the Pies to just two behinds in the first three quarters of play, O’Dea said the message was clear heading into the final term.
“It was to not go away from what has got us to that point,” she said.
“We just had to remain strong over the ball, keep cracking in and not lose our heads – just keep try to score and don’t go conservative.
“The girls just kept cracking in, one after the other. It was such a great team effort.”
The Demons will now have an eight-day break ahead of their Round 3 clash with Brisbane at Hickey Park next Sunday.
