BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 8 Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan discusses Saturday's hard fought win over Peel Thunder at HBF Arena to improve the Falcons to 4-4 on the season ahead of the bye and a clash with Subiaco at Medibank Stadium in Round 10.

QUESTION: Was that the best game Tyler Keitel has played?
ANSWER: It was a day that was suited to backs and if you look at both sides, I reckon the majority of the best players were probably from the back half. Tyler read the ball really well, marked the ball well and he was solid in the contest against some quality opposition. But the conditions suited defending more so than attacking and eight goals to five suggests it was hard to score. Meadows had 30-odd possessions, Tyler had 30-odd possessions and I think Drew Rohde had 25 and Manning spent a fair of time back finding plenty of it. We are really pleased with Tyler's progress and we think in time he's going to turn into an extremely good player. He's still a young kid and unfortunately he got a lot of press last year that put a lot of pressure on him, but he is coming along nicely.

Q: Luke Meadows had another standout performance off half-back as well?
A: We always probably had him as a defender but our back six has been really settled over a number of years. But pushing Strijk forward and with Rasmussen not playing a spot had opened up there with Tedesco missing a couple of games as well. We put Luke forward to play the Kody Manning-style forward role where he was more there for pressuring and harassing the opposition. We did that because he was a good defender first so it doesn’t surprise us that his best position is back and he's been exceptionally good the past few weeks.

Q: The great bonus of the form those players are in down back is that Kody Manning and Andrew Strijk can play forward, and again they combined for four goals?
A: They kicked four of our eight goals and it was a tough day for forwards. Both sides rolled numbers back and the quality of the forward 50 entries was poor, but that's what Andrew Strijk can do by finishing off. A couple of Kody's pressure acts that created goals for himself and us were fantastic. He just continues to play a great brand of footy and we love him here. Hopefully other people appreciate what he can do.

Q: Third win in a row, do you feel you are starting to build some momentum coming into the bye?
A: After eight games at the start of the season we were really confident that we would be around the money. If you asked me about being 4-4 in January I would have been disappointed. But if you asked me when we were 1-4 I would have taken it. Whilst Swans are on the bottom of the ladder, we were still fairly hampered by personnel when we beat them and since then we've got a couple of guys back. We beat Claremont and they are a funny side who are around the mark each week but can't seem to get wins and then Peel have played some really good footy. Three weeks ago it was looking pretty grim, but to get to the bye at 4-4 given our start I'm happy. It gives us a little bit of time to recharge the batteries. It has been a bit of a slog including a country trip and wet conditions this week so I think the players will appreciate the bye and then we'll hit the ground running, and hopefully put up a good showing against Subiaco.

Q: Seva Mozhaev has had to step up with Chris Keunen out. He's had some good performances and this was another up against AFL ruckmen Zac Clarke and Jack Hannath?
A: We didn’t play him a couple of weeks ago against Swans and that was purely a tactical ploy, and he probably deserved to play. Then last week in Kulin up against Mitch Andrews it was a really good battle and Mitch might have just got him on points. And this week whether the conditions and game style suited him or not, for him to go up against two big ruckmen for 90 per cent of the time, I thought he did a really good job. They probably get the points in the end but he was more than serviceable. What's been good since Nelly has been back especially is that we've been able to control it a bit more around stoppages and we won the clearance count again. Sev plays a part in that and he's getting in some really good positions around the ground, he's starting to clunk a few and we need to get him used to handing the ball off to some of our better ball users. We've been really happy with his last couple of weeks.

Q: Good time to freshen up the guys who have played the first eight games and for guys like Chris Keunen, Laine Rasmussen, Joe Morrow, Matt Fowler, Brayden Antonio and even Matt Guadagnin to get back closer to playing?
A: Guady's probably a while away but I would think that Rasmussen and Morrow are definites to be selected to play at some level against Subiaco. If you look at our conditioning of guys like Nelson and Manning when they've missed large parts of the season and slot straight back in, those two guys also have an advantage given they've been running because of hand injuries. Chris Keunen only got off his crutches last week so I would think he's highly doubtful to be available against Subiaco but until we get into training and see how his conditioning is, we won't really know. The good thing about Chris is that he doesn’t carry any weight and he's a naturally good runner so we think he'll come along pretty quickly. We've also got Corey Chalmers who got through a game in the reserves, and we had Kris Shannon, Keegan Knott and Luke Tedesco in the reserves. A lot of the first six or seven weeks we were wondering how to get a team together, now we are going to be able to put some pressure on at selection and have to make some tough calls and pick sides that are well balanced against the opposition. That's something we weren’t able to do in the first five or six weeks.