KRAKOUER WILL PLAY FOR FALCONS AFTER ALL

ANDREW Krakouer will play in the WAFL for West Perth in 2014 with reigning premiership coach Bill Monaghan looking at his addition as a huge bonus on and off the field for the Falcons.

Krakouer initially signed with West Perth after his AFL career with Collingwood ended following the 2013 season, but the 2010 WAFL premiership player, Sandover Medallist and Simpson Medallist accepted a job in the mining industry last month that looked to end his WAFL career prematurely.

However, that situation has now changed again and the 31-year-old has successfully gained employment closer to Perth that will allow him to train at the required level to still be a WAFL footballer.

Because of the pre-season training he has missed, Krakouer is an unlikely starter for Round 1 on Saturday March 22 against East Fremantle at East Fremantle Oval, but is still a significant boost on and off the field for West Perth in its premiership defence in 2014.

With 137 games of AFL experience at Richmond and Collingwood, plus his remarkable 2010 WAFL season with Swan Districts where he led Swans to an unlikely premiership, Krakouer is sure to add plenty on the field but also off it as a mentor for the Falcons' emerging Indigenous programs.

"For us to be able to draw on his experience and ability as a player, and hopefully introduce him into a side that is playing good footy can only be seen as a bonus. That is kind of how we are looking at it now," Monaghan said.

"It has been up and down, and I've tried to distance myself from thinking about it too much because it has been a fairly long and protracted set of circumstances that gets us to where we are now. All we will do now is put all our energies into getting Andrew ready to play league football for West Perth."

Monaghan always knew that Krakouer's ability to play with the Falcons in 2014 would depend on his employment opportunities so he was understanding at his decision last month to not play, but obviously is now delighted that the situation has changed.

"I was fully understanding of Andrew's reasons why he chose originally that he wasn’t going to play and he does need to set himself up for life outside of football, and he has a partner and two girls he needs to look after," he said.

"He was only trying to do the best for his family and we were respectful of that decision even if there was a tinge of disappointment. It wasn’t probably as bad, though, because he never actually played for West Perth. We were always thinking he was going to be a bonus on top of what we already had, and he would provide some leadership and direction for some of our young kids.

"The fact that he had never played for us made it less disappointing in the first place for me, but the flipside of that now that he is back is that when or if he gets up to the stage where he is ready to play senior footy for us, that will be a bonus."

To the best of Monaghan's knowledge, the employment situation with Krakouer has changed in regards to the work that West Perth had initially lined up and was taking time, has now been sorted and come through.

That means that Krakouer no longer needs to go and work in the mining industry in the north of WA.

"My understanding of the situation is that the jobs that we had in the pipeline for him all along were just taking a little longer to come to fruition than everyone had hoped, including Andrew and his family," Monaghan said.

"These jobs have now got certain start dates and are locked in with contracts which are done and dusted. It was more a case of ticking all the boxes to get them happening.

"Even though we can assist people in getting jobs, at the end of the days a lot of the time they are big companies who have to justify to human resources why they employ people, and there's a whole range of laws to stop putting blokes into jobs without the right qualifications.

"There was a fair bit of work to be done in the background and it all just took a little longer for it to all be finalised, but it's done now, he has got an employer, we have given him a football home and we hope that everyone down the track will get great reward out of all of that."

While Monaghan doesn’t expect Krakouer to be available for Round 1 against the Sharks with him likely requiring up to a month of solid training under his belt, he has no doubt he will be well and truly up and running enough to have an impact in the first half of the season.

"It's a little hard to tell at the moment because he hasn’t done a lot of training with us, but I would say that he will take two to four weeks to be in condition to play a game of football, and then we will need to reassess it from there in terms of his match fitness," he said.

"He is looking in reasonable nick and he hasn't let himself go or anything like that, and is coming off an AFL season last year, so I would say there'll be a fair bit of residual fitness there. We are hoping that in less than a month he will be able to trot out in a West Perth jumper."

However, everyone at West Perth is fully aware that the impact of Krakouer's signing will be felt much more than just whatever he is able to deliver on the field.

When he returned to the WAFL in 2010 and then the AFL in 2011 after some hard times, he became one of the best stories in Australian sport and is a terrific role model particularly for the Indigenous community.

His impact has already been seen with the Falcons able to field a team in the Nicky Winmar Cup for the first time and his impact with the Indigenous community in West Perth's zone will only continue to grow as time goes on.

"For us as a football club, we have already seen some benefits from having Andrew on board. You probably can't put a price on it, but on the weekend the Nicky Winmar Cup was held and it's the first time that West Perth has ever fielded a side in that," Monaghan said.

"That alone is a huge coup for us and Andrew in his brief time here has been able to help us facilitate that. The benefits are wide-ranging and it's not just what he will put on the park on Saturday afternoons.

"We have a big picture to look at and we've got a broad community base which we need to service and the Aboriginal community is a strong part of that, and we focus a lot on our multicultural programs but we need to make sure we service the Indigenous community as well. Andrew is going to play a huge part in that."

BY CHRIS PIKE