BILL'S GRILL – GRAND FINAL PREVIEW

AS A playing and coaching group, we won't be making anything of the fact that we are playing East Perth but we know the supporters will.

In my whole time as coach, I haven’t wanted to or needed to pump up derbies. There is a healthy respect from our playing group for that and I'm sure the supporters are very keen to see derbies and there's not often you get four in one year like we have this year, so that will keep a lot of people happy.

East Perth were fantastic on Sunday. They put Claremont under pressure and then withstood a couple of mini fight backs. I guess the margin at the end showed that Claremont might have put the cue in the rack, but they didn’t do that in our game so it was fought out a fair bit harder in our game. Having said that, we kicked 2.6 in the last quarter so we could have easily blown that margin out by a bit more. East Perth have been impressive for a while now and their two finals have been outstanding. We know we are going to have to be at our very best to beat them.

There is a lot of well wishes coming in and a lot of people fired up because we are playing East Perth in a grand final, but at the end of the day as a playing group and coaching group, we are respectful of the history between East Perth and West Perth but if we focus on the fact that it's a derby then that can only distract us from the big prize. We would be preparing the same for whoever we are playing, albeit there might be some slight structural or tactical differences depending on your opponent.

Even in the derbies that I have coached, we don’t necessarily get caught up with all the other stuff. We enjoy the derbies but it's a grand final and if a derby is more important than a grand final, then I would be very surprised.

In terms of the competition, it's a bit of a changing of the guard and it's the first time in a decade that one of Claremont or Subiaco haven’t been playing on grand final day. It has breathed a lot of life into the competition and I think there are a lot of people out there excited by seeing East Perth and West Perth in the grand final.

There's also that little bit out there with it being the last year before East Perth goes into full alignment or partnership with West Coast so a lot of the neutrals are probably going to be on the West Perth side come Sunday.

We were really happy with our training sessions last week even though the weather hasn’t been fantastic. We have tailored it a little bit around that and the players have been able to freshen up a bit. We had a really good training session at Scotch College on Sunday morning, right near Claremont Oval, and then went to watch our reserves play. Our focus has been on having the mantra of taking it one session at a time, and ticking every little thing off as we go. That's designed to keep the players focused but also to make sure they aren’t mentally drained come grand final day.

We had a training session at Subi on Tuesday night and then talked about what to do Wednesday, and then we will do the same on Friday and then tackle Sunday as it comes.

It is very disappointing that Michael Pettigrew hasn’t been able to get himself right to put himself up for selection on top of Anthony Tsalikis who will miss the chance of playing in a grand final through injury as well. Luke Tedesco has done everything he can to get right and we have some great discussion now at our selection meeting if he can force his way in or not. Two weeks ago at best we thought he was 50-50, but he is well ahead of that now. We will still ask him to do a few things at training on Wednesday night.

The other one who is a bit from left field is Matt Johnson. He was really good early in the year and he's got through three games in the reserves now and whilst he may not be at his best, we think he's someone with a real X-factor about him with good speed and the ability to kick a goal from nowhere. We've also got Frank Stockley, who won the Prendergast Medal, and we have that lingering debate about playing two genuine ruckmen and if there's a side who potentially you can do that against, it would be East Perth so that's something else we will continually discuss.

With Scott Lycett and Jamie Cripps coming into the East Perth team and then you throw in Swan and Seal, they have got plenty of goal scorers but Josh Smith is the most difficult key forward to match-up on in the competition. We would think that Dan Hunt is now our No. 1 key defender and we will be pretty confident of him doing the job on him. Michael Pettigrew has done a fantastic job on Josh over four or five games now, but we can't worry about not having him. Nick Rodda and Shaun Marusic would be our other options on Josh, but we are really confident that Dan will be competitive up against him.

Our reserves have been fantastic and it's a full credit to the players and the coaching staff to get those guys up. They have now won 13 of their last 15 games, and last nine straight so they get a great opportunity to play on grand final day. We have the youngest reserves list in the competition so it's a great opportunity for them to learn and work out what playing at the next level is about. A reserves grand final is traditionally more on par to a league game in the home and away season. If they keep playing with the passion and desire that they have over the last two thirds of the season then they give themselves a real shot, but we are really proud of the way they have gone about it. To see the excitement with the games they have been winning it has buoyed everyone at the club, and it's great for our future.  

BY BILL MONAGHAN