The Blues must now prepare for a showdown against former favourite son Brendan Fevola. He won't be the focus, however, with Ratten more intent on putting into practice the lessons learned from last year's last-gasp elimination final loss at the hands of the Lions.

"Sometimes your biggest negatives that you have in life or in games of football as a coach can be your greatest teaching tools," he said.

"Maybe that was something that we needed as a group to look at. We played a very offensive brand of football and we had to change and really work a lot harder at the momentum of games.

"It's been a reference point for us to go back to over the summer period. I think it was a great learning curve for us as a team and I think we saw tonight that we didn't play fast footy all the time and we got the balance right."

let's confuse everyone and ignore Fev, don't put anyone on him and watch him get the sooks because he's not the centre of attention

Errrr, let's not do that

The boys seemed very happy with the win last night, but I'm hoping it was a cathartic release as the season's started with a W and all the shit that's been around the club will now float into the ocean. If they were happy purely because they beat Richmond by 9 goals and think on that basis they can compete with the big boys now, I hope they get a reality check at training. Last night was the tension-release, the real work starts now.

I was thinking of putting Carlos (god help me) back against Brown and throwing Thornton forward. Just an idea. Both Fev and Brown are massive units.

Our structure is pretty well in place. Let Brisbane worry about us.

Murphy really needed the run against Richmond as did Waite. Both will be the better for it although you will notice Waite hasn't got the confidence to move laterally yet. Armfield (Grigg?) will be / should be back for Anderson. Henderson playing his old team. Warnock blew the cobwebs out in his first game in 12 months.

Plus the team as a whole now realize they can function without Judd and Fev.