“I assessed his game[Cripps] better than the way I handled the media conference the other day,” Teague said after Sunday’s game.

“That was pretty average by me.

“Today he was tough again,he competed and he won it,and when he didn’t he pressured well.

“I thought the injury was in the past. It hampered him in rounds two and three so when it got brought up I was probably a bit frustrated and I wasn’t honest and direct as I could have been.

“At the end of the day the message I wanted to get across is he is fine now and I probably could have been clearer with the messaging around that.

“I thought it was one of my worst press conferences.”

He said he knew “the full extent of the injury”.

“There’s times you want to protect your player,” Teague continued on Sunday. “This one,the frustration probably came off it was in the past and we were dragging up old news because he didn’t probably have his best day.

“Our medical staff I have absolute trust in,I think they do a very good job but do they feed that information back to me? Absolutely. I am clear of what is going on.

“We will always put the best interest of our players at heart.”

The coach said the Blues did not adjust to the game well enough to stay with the Demons,and said that it was one of his side’s more disappointing performances for the year.

“When they went forward and got it to ground they beat us in the crumbs there,” he said.

“We tried a few things ... it was more our ball use around the ground,the ones from stoppages.”

He said David Cuningham’s knee injury looked “serious”. It happened seconds into the game and he had to be substituted out. Cuningham was to play on Jake Lever,an influential figure in the match.

Harry McKay kicked three goals despite looking quite uncomfortable with a shoulder injury that kept him off the field for 10 minutes in the first term.

“He has had that for a couple of weeks so hopefully it will continue to get better,he said it felt better going into the game than last game,” Teague said.