BILL'S GRILL – ROUND 17

I WON'T hide from the fact that we are really happy to be 10-4. It's probably not a position that we were expecting to be in and I dare say it's not a position that most people from outside our club or other clubs were expecting us to be in.

We have been really lucky that in two or three close games we've been able to get over the line and that clearly helps because 10-4 or 7-7 is at completely different ends of the spectrum. We know there is still a lot of work to be done and whilst we are happy with what we have done, we know that there is a lot of hard work still to be done in the coming weeks and we can't stop for any second thinking what we have done is good enough.

Expectations rise from within and externally because of the way we have been playing, and all of a sudden you are judged a lot more harshly when people think you are going to win, and opposition sides look more closely at trying to pick apart what we are trying to do.

We are happy with where we are, but we are still well short of what needs to be done and we are working hard to win enough games to play finals footy. If we are lucky enough to get to that stage, we will reassess and come up with a plan that hopefully comes finals time can allow us to show  our wares at that stage of the year.

Nick Rodda, Matt Johnson, Ray Bartholomew, Laine Rasmussen, Jason Salecic and Jordan Jones weren’t in our league side before the bye against Peel and all of those guys are at different stages and have slightly different injuries.

Sala has only played four games and in two of those he got injured, Bartholomew has now missed three plus he went down at the 10-minute mark of the game he got hurt in and Johnson has now missed a few. Mark Hutchings has only played seven games so there have been opportunities for guys to step up to the plate, and it's been really pleasing that they have played some good footy.

It might be a little more difficult after the bye though. Rodda, Rasmussen and Jones were all touch and go to play last week so they should all come back. Jason has ticked all the boxes that we wanted him to. He was really disappointed with his first effort in the twos, but it was important to get some game time and then he started to find some footy last week and after two solid weeks of training he will come back in after the bye.

That means there will be at least four changes to play South Fremantle and we don't know where Mark Hutchings sits, and then there's Bartholomew and Johnson who will probably come back and play reserves even though we won't completely rule them out of coming directly back in. We probably don’t want to make seven changes, though, and both have missed a month of footy with soft tissue injuries so we will most likely ease them into the South Fremantle where they can play 60 or 70 minutes in the reserves.

Unless something comes out of the blue between now and then, we expect to have pretty much a full list to pick from for the South Fremantle game.

BY BILL MONAGHAN