BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 5 Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan discusses Saturday's loss to East Perth and looks ahead to this Saturday's annual Anzac clash with Swan Districts which will take place at Steel Blue Oval.

QUESTION: You fought really hard in the first half and were right in the contest at half-time. Can you put your finger on what went wrong in the second half?
ANSWER: I can tell you the difference between the two halves, but what I probably can't tell you is why that's the case. In the first half we had 210 possessions and we've been averaging about 300 for games. We took 50 or 60 uncontested marks so we were able to control the tempo of the game, and our pressure skills were reasonably good even though they are still a way off where we want them to be. But we weren’t getting opened up as much on turnovers because we were controlling the field position a little better. But after half-time that all went out the window. Their possession count in the third quarter was 120 to 75 so it went back to where we just couldn’t control the tempo of the game or field position.

In the end we just got overran and it's a number of things at play. Obviously personnel is one thing, confidence is another and that's a really difficult thing to coach along with belief. That's not helping and for some reason we just keep making critical errors when we seem to have got a good passage of play going. We miss a simple target or drop a chest mark and aren’t capitalising. I'm sure other sides experience the same things through a game, but when we work so hard to give ourselves an opportunity and then turn it over, we aren’t good enough to get it back off the opposition. We've got plenty of work to do and we are only five games in, but we can't keep saying there's plenty of time. We have to rectify it pretty quickly. 

Q: How big of an effort was it for Andrew Strijk to play and will he be able to back to up to play Swan Districts?
A: Andrew worked hard to get himself right. There was no structural damage to his leg so that was an advantage, but it's pulled up sore and he got another knock on it which tends to happen when you have a sore spot. It's amazing how quickly it gets stood on or poked or prodded. He'll be monitored this week to see how he goes and I'm expecting him to get up, but he did pull up sore.

Q: Aaron Black keeps finding a lot of the footy and he is your leading goal kicker. It will be interesting when Nelson and Guadagnin come back if he keeps playing inside, or moves back out to the wing?
A: We've always had the long-term view that Aaron would develop into an inside mid, or has the ability to. Our conversations have always centred around if we have one of, if not the best wingman in the competition do we take him off the wing to make him an inside mid. We think we can find the balance where he can do both. And it's been pleasing for him to push forward and kick goals. He is working really hard and he's as frustrated as anyone that we aren’t getting all the reward we should from his hard work. And he's not alone. Aidan Lynch is doing a power of work, Steven Browne down back has been exceptionally good but we just haven’t had enough winners across the ground in any week. It's a weight of numbers and when you're vulnerable with personnel, you need 22 players all chipping in and we're really struggling to get that over four quarters.

Q: Mitch Peirce was a real positive in his debut?
A: We probably should have brought him in a couple of weeks ago, but we are a little loathed sometimes to bring some of the kids in when you aren’t going well because you can expose them, but I thought he did a reasonable job under the circumstances. He won enough of his own footy and while his foot skills weren’t great, I thought he handled the ball and delivered it by hand very well. We think Mitch can become a very good footballer but in a side where you've probably got six or eight guys in the infancy of their careers, the expectations that we have on them need to be realistic. The bottom line is we expect that we should be competitive enough to be in most games and look to win them, so we aren’t using that as an excuse. It doesn’t mean that we have to accept the results, but we just need to do everything right to come away with a win.

Q: Does Luke Tedesco come straight back?
A: He had his sister's wedding on the weekend so I can't think of a reason not to bring him back in. He gives us some strength and experience, and it's not as if we were so fantastic on the weekend and someone is going to keep him out.

Q: Is Max Duffy a chance to return?
A: He had an ultrasound on his TFL (Tensor Fasciae Latae) last week and he has a strain in that. I'm not 100 per cent sure if that's a one, two, three or four-week injury. I'd be very happy if it was only a one and most strains are at least one, if not two.

Q: Has someone like Corey Chalmers done enough to get a look in too after an injury-interrupted start?
A: He was very good in the reserves and there's still another couple of kids there playing good footy. Nathan Alexandre is playing really well too. We think we can bring some others in, it's just at the moment they aren’t our experienced players and we need to mindful of throwing the lambs to the wolves. We will pick the best side we can this week and we'll try to work out a way we can beat Swan Districts to hopefully get win No. 2.

Q: Swans have been better the last two weeks after a tough first three weeks. And now it's similar to last week, you are both 1-4 coming into the game and neither wants to slip to 1-5?
A: It should be a cracking game. Our games against Swan Districts over a reasonable stretch of time have always been pretty good encounters. We are both probably going to be in similar situations not only with our records, but our personnel. Ricky Cary looked like he had a reasonably significant shoulder injury on Sunday, young Hackett had ice on his shoulder and hardly came back on after half-time and Blight hurt either an ankle or foot early in the game. They may be personnel wise pretty similar to us so I will be expecting a reasonable crowd like always when we play Swans, and it will be a hard fought game. We will need to be at our best to beat them no doubt.