FALCONS COACHING FOCUS ON CONTINUING TO GROW

THE West Perth Football Club coaching staff continues to go to great lengths to improve and provide the very best in coaching to the Falcons' players and in 2014 that includes the addition of a new development coaching role.

There have been minimal changes to the West Perth coaching staff in 2014 with Bill Monaghan again the senior coach and joined by Paul Sanzone and Craig Smoker while Devan Perry has moved on for 2014 after being forwards coach for the 2013 premiership.

Trevor Screaigh has been promoted from being a development coach to being the forwards coach in 2014 while Michael Pratt and Ian Strover have moved into development coaching role with Strover's job solely to help with the Falcons players going back to play with Amateur clubs.

Monaghan is confident that once again he will have strong support from his coaching staff and even though he will miss the input in the box of Perry, he understands his decision that he couldn’t commit to another season of WAFL football.

"We have lost Devan Perry. His work commitments mean that he doesn’t have the time but he was outstanding with us," Monaghan said.

"Even though he predominately coached our forwards which isn’t where he played, he has been around successful sides and is a three-time premiership player so he really brought a different view to a lot of people at West Perth.

"Most of the people at West Perth are long-time West Perth people so he gave the players a different viewpoint. He only spoke when he had something to add and he really helped the dynamics of our coaching and playing group, but he has moved on."

As for the changes to the coaching group in 2014, as well as Screaigh becoming an assistant coach, the new development coaching roles for both Pratt and Strover is something that Monaghan helps will end up being tremendously successful.

He is especially happy to now have Strover take up a role which will help the relationship of West Perth players with Amateur clubs grow, and also allow the Falcons to follow closely how their players are performing while back there.

"We have promoted Trevor Screaigh who was one of our development coaches last year, and he will be our forwards coach and we are looking forward to him stepping up.  He coached his own amateur side a couple of years ago and has been with us since then," he said.

"We have also added two new development coaches and they are Michael Pratt who has been involved at North Beach for a number of years, and Ian Strover whose main role will be to liaise with our community clubs and watch our players who go back to play amateur footy.

"We just found that it was an area that we could service a bit better and resources and time is always an issue, but we think there are huge benefits in having someone from our club dealing directly with community clubs and watching our players play when they are there.

"We are excited to add that new role to our development structure, but he certainly won't be interfering on game day with our players like the AFL clubs do. His job when watching is to purely observe and not get involved because we need to let the coaches at those clubs coach."

Meanwhile, over the summer Monaghan, Smoker and Sanzone all attended an AFL Coaching Conference in Adelaide and they learned some things which they hope to now bring back to West Perth and help the playing squad even further in 2014.

"It went really well. The hardest part of those coaches' conferences is making sure that you are going to the right sessions and the ones that you will get something out of. The keynote speakers were outstanding and right from the pointy end of high performance and coaching," Monaghan said.

"Darren Burgess spoke who is back at Port Adelaide now after doing time at Liverpool so it was exciting to hear from him.

"There were other sessions with fantastic presenters so you just had to pick the right ones to go to. We were after high performance ideas so some of it gave us some great ideas and it was a really valuable experience for the three of us to go to."

BY CHRIS PIKE