FALCONS TO FIND POSITIVES FROM KEUNEN INJURY

WEST Perth will be without premiership ruckman and life member Chris Keunen for the longest period since he cemented his role as the No. 1 ruckman, but coach Bill Monaghan is confident the opportunities it presents for Seva Mozhaev and his band of helpers will be grasped.

Keunen arrived at West Perth in 2006 and after battles with the likes of Mark Seaby, Robert Warnock and Mitch Andrews over the No. 1 ruck spot, he grasped it as his own by 2010 and has been outstanding ever since.

Along the way he has played 174 games with West Perth, represented Western Australia, earned life membership and was a key player in the 2013 premiership.

But in Round 2 of this year during the third quarter against Perth at HBF Arena, his legs were taken out by a Demons player sliding into him and the end result has eventually been revealed to be a fracture in his knee.

He has already missed last Saturday's game against Subiaco and Monaghan expects him to now miss anywhere up to two months with the injury.

He's not the Falcons' only player on the sidelines either with Kody Manning and Shane Nelson still sidelined, but both are expected back before Keunen is.

"Chris Keunen had an X-ray early in the week that cleared him and then he had an MRI later in the week and he looks like he has a fracture in his knee," Monaghan said.

"I haven't spoken to him since he was due to go and see an orthopaedic surgeon but I would have thought even at a minor level a bone fracture is a six to eight-week injury.

"Manning's a strange one. He got a significant cork around the shin and calf that bled significantly last week so he's struggling to put weight on that.

"But that will resolve quickly once it starts resolving but at the moment it's black and blue and he's struggling to put weight on it. I'd say he's less than 50-50 to play against East Fremantle but I'm pretty confident he'll play the week after."

West Perth's focus now turns to making the best of the situation in the absence of Keunen.

The role of carrying the ruck fell to Seva Mozhaev last Saturday against Subiaco at HBF Arena and in his first league game back from a knee reconstruction, he dominated the hit outs and worked hard for 57 hit outs against the team he began his WAFL career with.

However, West Perth wasn’t able to capitalise in the midfield and lost the clearances with Subiaco's strong band of midfielders including Adam Cockie, Leigh Kitchin, Kyal Horsley, Brett Mahoney and Brett Robinson having a big say in the Lions' eventual 44-point win.

With good reason after racking up 57 hit outs, Monaghan will continue to back in Mozhaev to do the majority of the ruck work with some support from a combination of Nick Rodda, Tyler Keitel, Michael Lourey and Mark Hamilton.

But he knows the most important part is starting to get more of a result out of the middle from Mozhaev getting his first hand to the ball with the ruck knocks.

"We got Sev over a couple of years ago as part of a succession plan for when Chris decides to pull up stumps. Obviously Sev missed all of last year with a knee reconstruction and he made a good return," Monaghan said.

"He is a developing footballer so we expect that there is going to be some improvement and he hasn’t played a lot of league footy. He gave our mids first use of it with the number of hit outs but we did get beaten in the clearances. We've got a couple of other options.

"Hamilton played Round 1 and hasn’t played since but he can come in and do some back up ruck work, and so can Rodda and Keitel. At least in the short term it will be Sev doing the ruck with some pinch hitters around so it's a really good time for him to develop his craft.

"We just need to get a little bit more out of that. The numbers were 70 to about 30 hit outs and we lost the clearance count. Maybe Subi didn’t really care if they won the hit outs or not and that's something that isn’t uncommon for one side to dominate the hit out count but not the clearances."