BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 14 Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan discusses Saturday's loss to South Fremantle that ended the Falcons' winning run ahead of another crucial clash this Saturday back at HBF Arena against East Fremantle.

QUESTION: You dominated the game in the second quarter but didn’t take full advantage and then things came apart a little bit after half-time?
ANSWER: I thought for a fair bit of the first half even though we were a couple down at quarter-time, it felt like a game we could have easily gone into half-time three or four goals up. But then in the first 10 or so minutes in the third quarter we were very good as well and had a couple of opportunities to kick goals, but missed and then within a blink of an eye they kicked five or six unanswered ones. That was very disappointing and that 15 or 20-minute patch was probably the difference in the game.

Q: They made you pay for some turnovers especially coming out of the back-line in the second half?
A: Our ball use probably across all areas of the ground, but especially coming out of our back 50 hurt us. When sides pressure well and they pressured well at times, you understand there is going to be some errors but the number of times that we were free and should have been able to hit targets we missed them significantly. That hurt us. 

Q: Andrew Strijk was good again up forward but he needs a bit more help?
A: I thought our forward-line really struggled but having said that the stats don't often tell the story of what the game says, but both sides had an even number of scoring shots. With 22 scoring shots each, South went inside the 50 on 10 more times than us so our forwards were actually much more efficient in creating scoring shots. But I think anyone that watched the game wouldn’t have thought that. South only scored 40 per cent of the time going inside-50 and we were 50-plus. That's a bizarre stat that one because I thought our forwards were disgraceful and theirs were very good.

Q: Another big scalp for Dean Munns blanketing Tim Kelly and he won a bit more of the ball himself?
A: That's probably the pleasing thing with Dean this week. He was able to do the job and win enough of the footy including a couple of clearances. I think that's eight weeks in-a-row. His powers of concentration and ability to stick to the task has been outstanding. We really need to keep discussing whether or not that's worthwhile for us and I think again this week you would say it was. But at some point maybe we should have put him onto Ryan Cook because his second half was very good. But I would have thought between Lynch, Nelson, van Berlo, Black and Kerr that we should have been able to absorb a bit of what Ryan Cook did. I'm really disappointed in the efforts of our other mids not to defend very well through the middle of the ground.

Q: Despite the way the day went, it was good for Luke Tedesco to come in and reach 150 games?
A: Luke's been a fantastic servant for the football club. His career was probably fairly young when I took over and he's been a real warrior. He has always put the team before himself, he is well-respected and he's a premiership player and former captain of the club. He is a fantastic person and it's great that he got to 150. Obviously we are really disappointed that we weren’t able to put in a performance that matched what he's done over a long career.

Q: How did you see Chris Keunen's return?
A: Serviceable. In the first half I thought he was OK but Brock Higgins was clearly the best big man on the ground. He clearly beat Chris on points but there were some encouraging signs early. Chris has missed a fair bit of footy and his form in the reserves wasn’t great, it was serviceable and for a half he was serviceable this week. He needs to improve in the next couple of weeks.

Q: Luke Meadows actually wasn’t too bad on Ben Saunders but he still ended up kicking six?
A: Ben's an exceptional talent. He kicked 6.1 from eight possessions and three or four of those I would have thought weren’t directly related to Luke. There was one when we switched the ball inboard and Saunders intercepted and got a 50m penalty. There were one or two handballs over the top as well so Luke was stiff, but the stats and scoreboard says he kicked six on him. Luke will be disappointed but it's a great learning for him. There's nothing wrong in a person's career and as a team to be taught lessons as long as you learn from them. Hopefully Luke will learn something from it and be better for it.

Q: Would you expect Nick Rodda back on Saturday against East Fremantle?
A: He will be touch and go. We'll err on the side of caution. We are at the part of the season where the weather and everything isn’t great. He has a slight strain in a quad so we'll be cautious with him so I expect he's 50-50. Manning is probably two weeks away, Rasmussen was a late out and he will probably come back you would think. We think there's still a bit of depth and although we had four or five out this week, hopefully we'll get a few back in the next couple of weeks.

Q: Have to be ready for a desperate East Fremantle on Saturday?
A: In some ways we were lucky with Peel and East Fremantle going down as well so we were able to hold on to third spot, but next week's game is ultra-critical for both clubs. We can open up a two-game gap on East Fremantle or we will slip behind them with their percentage advantage over us. Peel has the bye and then we play them the week after. The challenges keep coming and whilst I've been really proud of the way the players have been able to turn around a 1-4 start, we can't now rest and think we've done enough. There are a certain amount of games we need to get to and we are well short of that at the moment.