FALCONS TO GET BACK DEFENSIVE MINDSET IN 2018

WEST Perth reached two WAFL Grand Finals and won a premiership in a four-year stretch of playing three finals before coach Bill Monaghan thought it might be time for a bit of a change to the game plan in 2017.

Being strong defensively had been a focus for West Perth over those four years previously which brought about a tremendous amount of success. The Falcons wouldn’t kick big scores but they would make themselves difficult to score against.

In the finish, that led to the Falcons winning a first premiership in a decade breaking through for the flag in 2013 and then they reached another Grand Final in 2015 only coming up against a rampant Subiaco outfit.

It was another strong season in 2016 where West Perth finished the home and away season in third position before coming up against strong South Fremantle and Peel Thunder line ups in the finals to bow out in straight sets.

It was following those 52 and 60-point losses in the 2016 finals to South Fremantle and Peel that brought Monaghan to thinking a bit of a change in approach might be required from the Falcons in 2017.

The defensive approach had been successful over the previous four years especially in 2013 where West Perth scored 92.6 points a game themselves while conceding 83.4.

A year later they missed the finals in 2014 scoring 81.0 points and giving up 72.0 a game.

It was another Grand Final year in 2015 with West Perth kicking 84.4 points a game and conceding 72.4.

Then in 2016, West Perth scored 75.2 points and conceded 71.9 but following that Monaghan felt to be able to challenge for a premiership again they needed to be more attacking.

In the end in 2017, West Perth scored 79.7 points a game but the consequence was conceding 91.6. That was only better than East Fremantle and Perth who won just six games between them for the whole season.

While an attacking mindset won't completely be thrown out the window now from the Falcons heading into 2018, the game plan will have a defensive mindset first and foremost.

That has been a big focus from West Perth over the summer and now Monaghan is looking forward to seeing how that more defensive approach works starting in Round 1 against Claremont at HBF Arena on Easter Saturday.

"We based our game for a number of years on being really strong defensively and we had a fair amount of success on that. But last year we tried to tweak it and we were trying to move the ball a bit quicker to play a more open and free style of footy," Monaghan said.

"It probably turned out we scored two or three more goals a game in 2017 than we had done the previous years, but the flipside was we couldn’t control the defensive side of our game. We had too many big scores kicked against us. 

"We are just going to tweak it back the other way and we think by focusing on our ball movement last year, that will help. But we will have a more defensive mindset because we were giving up too many points last year.

"We still want to try to score and we think the game needs to look good and the players like scoring, and the fans come to see scoring, but 90-odd points a game is too many. The players have been really good with that and they understand we can't get goals leaked on us every week."