BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN PRELIMINARY FINAL Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan discusses Sunday's preliminary final win over East Perth at HBF Arena in front of 8514 people which sees the Falcons qualify for this Sunday's WAFL grand final against Subiaco at Domain Stadium.

QUESTION: Does it get much better than that with a massive crowd at your home ground in a preliminary final against your arch-rivals, and you were able put together such an impressive last three quarters even down two men on the bench for the second half?
ANSWER: I think if you wrote a script most people with a red and blue flavour towards them would think that's as good as it gets. The reality is that as happy as I am with it, the achievement hasn’t been made yet so we've got to dust ourselves off, prepare well this week and try to right the wrongs from last week when we were clearly outplayed by a more desperate and harder at the ball in Subiaco. That's the beauty of football and that's why you get a second chance, and we've earned that right and now we can have another crack at them.

Q: How were you able to finish the game so strongly when it was your 11th straight without a break, and Matt Johnson and Laine Rasmussen were off injured from early in the third quarter?
A: That might be one of the reasons we were able to do that, sometimes continuity and preparation being the same week after week helps. The work rate the players have as part-time footballers is outstanding so I'm really proud of what they were able to achieve, but I'll keep coming back to it and as happy as we are to make a grand final, we've got to get up one more time and we are really confident in our strength and conditioning staff, and with the preparation of the players that we will be right for this week.

Q: Would you rule both Shannon and Rasmussen out of the grand final at this point?
A: I think there's no chance that Johnson can play, even if it was the lowest grade hamstring he wouldn’t play but it's clearly not that and it looks fairly significant. I would think it's a Grade 2 so it's probably a four to six-weeker. You just don’t know with ankles so we don’t know about Rasmussen. We left last week's game thinking Lourey wasn’t really a chance to play but sometimes if they do the recovery to the nth degree they just can get it right, and what you saw out there with Lourey was probably because he came off early the week before and he started his rehab at three quarter-time. Laine went out after half-time but he wasn’t really a chance so we got him straight up into the rooms, iced it up and was on crutches, and he will be in a moon boot during the week. Laine's got wonderful powers of concentration and pushing through pain, so I think if anyone is going to do it then Laine Rasmussen can, but we're not going to know probably until Saturday. Just to let you know with Lourey, once he and the medical people thought he would be able to play, he did nothing for the week and we just took it on trust that he will get up, and that's what we will do with Laine and on Thursday or Friday the medical staff will make that decision. And from there he won't train, he'll just play on Sunday.

Q: You've never had a true power forward in your time here as coach and you won a premiership despite that, but with Michael Lourey's performance it just shows how crucial and rare they are to find?
A: Especially coming off the fact that he had a bit of an issue with his ankle I thought he jumped at the ball well, kicked the ball really well and I think having Rodda up in our forward six really takes some of the pressure off him. Rods leads well and competes hard in the air and at ground level so all of a sudden you have a different dynamic so we need to work out with the Subi forward-line if we can afford to keep Rods forward. Again, Marcus Adams was outstanding and he kept Lamb to four possessions in the first quarter, one in the second quarter and a clean sheet after half-time. He was just huge and Tyler Keitel did enough good things as a young kid. It wasn’t a perfect game, but he did well down there. Joe Morrow and Drew Rohde continue to improve each week and provide good aerial support, and then Tedesco, Browne and Strijk we know what we'll get from them. Our goal will be to try and find a way to keep Rodda forward, but Subi have got some big targets and decent forwards so we need to get that balance forward.

Q: Kody Manning ended up with good numbers of 19 touches and two goals, but it's just his ferocious tackling that makes him strike fear into the opposition?
A: I would have thought, and everyone can judge what they want on a game of footy, that Adams and Manning were clearly in my mind our best two players in a group of players that were very good collectively. He was just huge for us out there and what he did defensively, and offensively, we can't ask any more from a player who plays that role. He has probably been battling a little bit over the last month or six weeks, and there are reasons for that, but all of a sudden he gets a couple of allies in Rasmussen, Rodda and Steve Potente who are good at putting pressure on, and he lifts. Everyone will argue that other players do that sort of thing, but I think Kody at his best defensively you'd struggle to find a better defensive forward in the country at the level they play at.