BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 13 Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan discusses Saturday's seventh straight win in a heated clash with Claremont to move the Falcons to seventh spot on the WAFL ladder ahead of a clash this Saturday with the second placed South Fremantle at HBF Arena.

QUESTION: Given you were well on top for more than three quarters, lost a couple of players to injury and were playing a desperate team, I think you would have left pretty happy despite Claremont's late comeback?
ANSWER: Very much so, we would take four points every day of the week. Sometimes you are happy with the way you win, sometimes you're not but you always take the points. For two and three-quarter quarters we were very good and that's why we were 30 or 40 points up. They kicked a couple late in the third quarter that probably gave them a bit of a sniff, and their season was on the line and we were coming off some good form and mentally we just relaxed a little bit. Then as we've shown a couple of times in the last couple of years things can change pretty quickly. I wasn’t overly happy, but not totally unhappy either.

Q: Fair to say there's not a lot of love between the two teams this year for whatever reason, things certainly threatened to boil over there in the third quarter?
A: I'm not 100 per cent why that all came about. Clearly we have a guy who has been suspended but that was a completely separate incident and nothing to do with everything else that was going on. it wasn’t as if that sparked anything and it wasn’t as if that was retaliation, that was just a separate report. But for a five or eight-minute period there, you'd say that Claremont had some brain fades or snaps. There were four free-kicks without the ball going back to the middle, all received by us. It would clearly show that we weren’t the ones that had the problem.

Q: It would have been pleasing to keep the momentum going after the state game to have won seven straight now and be in third spot with East Fremantle and Peel losing?
A: Yeah but what I've been consistently saying is that we've shown that form can change rapidly and form can change from good to poor pretty quickly. We need to guard against it going back the other way. While we are firmly just focused on this week, we do go South Fremantle, East Fremantle and Peel in our next three games so I will sit a lot more comfortable in three weeks' time to tell you if I'm happy with where we sit. We are currently 8-4 and that's a good position to be in, we are outright third but there's a lot of work to be done and it starts this week against South Fremantle.

Q: Disappointing for Nick Rodda to injure a quad with the form he's been in. What do you know about that at this stage?
A: It's going to be the low end of a quad strain. With big quads like that you'd think he'd be able to handle a little strain. In all seriousness, we had a similar thing with Marcus Adams last year and the doctors said there is enough other fibres around there to compensate. I'm hoping that it's a quick recovery but we will know more later in the week. I would think he's no chance to play this week even if he declared himself right on Thursday night, we'd still err on the side of caution. He will probably be one or two weeks out.

Q: Chris Keunen got another game under his belt in the reserves. Brock Higgins is a bit of a workhorse, would you back in Seva Mozhaev to take him on or could Keunen come in?
A: It's a really interesting decision. I had a really tough conversation last week and it's never pleasing to leave someone out of the side or tell them they're not coming into the side. Chris is under no illusions that he needs to be in good form and whilst he had been working into fitness after his broken leg, he knew that his form wasn’t up to scratch. He was a lot better on the weekend. There are lots of different opinions over whether he or Seva are our No. 1 ruckman but I think over a long period of time Chris has proven to be that. I would expect that before long Chris will be back in the side and that could be as early as this week.

Q: Mark Hamilton close to return as well to replace Rodda?
A: I would expect Hamilton to come back in. He rolled an ankle the week before and he's managed that quite before. He was probably 50-50 leading into Thursday training last week and we probably erred on the side of caution with him. Manning is a couple of weeks away, Joel Leeson got through a game of reserves after having a broken knuckle so he will be fairly certain of coming back in and Luke Tedesco's last two or three games in the reserves after getting back to full fitness have been very good. He is getting very close and I'd like to be able to tell everyone when he will play because his next game is his 150th. We will make that selection later this week and should he force his way in we will let the world know because that's really important for his family, friends and supporters. We want to recognise a great warrior of the footy club when he gets that opportunity.

Q: It's been a long time since you played South Fremantle to start the season. What are you expecting on Saturday?
A: Again on the weekend they were a little undermanned going into the game and lost a couple during the game but to still be able to win down in Mandurah in pretty ordinary conditions against a side who had been in good form was a good effort. South are going to be hard to beat. They are going to be up and about, they will run hard from behind and they've got multiple avenues to goal. They have a good midfield and a defence that in a zoning type situation defend really well. We will have to be at our very best.