BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan will be conducting a weekly question and answer segment for the club's website. Here he discusses the last up loss to East Fremantle and this Sunday's clash with South Fremantle.

QUESTION: You always knew the game against East Fremantle was big in the context of the season. You had your chances but came up short and now are three games out of the four. What are your reflections on the performance?

ANSWER: We are really disappointed with the end result. We thought that for the majority of the first three quarters we did a lot right but a couple of late goals before half-time probably kept the score a lot closer than we needed it to be. Then after kicking the first goal of the third quarter we let them to kick the next few. It was a disappointing finish to a game where I thought our effort was pretty good, especially in the last quarter but we failed to take advantage of an inside-50 count that was in our favour. We went inside-50 14 times in the last quarter for two goals and yes that's good defending from East Fremantle, but also some poor choices on kicking inside the forward 50 from us and not enough of keeping the ball in there with good pressure. There were a number of factors that led to a poor last quarter on the scoreboard.

Q: Leaves you with a lot of work to do now to make the finals with nine games of the season to go?

A: How many we need to win you don’t know. It was only a few weeks ago that East Fremantle was 3-4 but now they have won four in-a-row. They might lose their next eight and you can say the same for any side, you just don’t know. A couple of years ago we won 11 games and that wasn’t enough to make finals and now this season is looking fairly similar with 11 possibly not being enough, but 12 and a better percentage might be. Rarely would the fifth team win 13 games but it's mathematically possible. Hopefully there are a few surprises along the way, but all we can do is continue to try to play our best footy and keep improving, and if we are lucky enough to win footy games then it will be what it is at the end of the season. We just have to keep improving.

Q: What was your reaction to Andrew Krakouer's retirement letter?

A: For me it wasn’t a shock because I have been across a few things that have been happening over the last week and-a-half that we haven’t necessarily been telling everyone. The end result isn’t that big of a shock or a surprise although I'm disappointed about it. We have been really consistent with our message that when we got Andrew here we were hoping that he would have an impact on the field and help us improve. We lost a couple of senior players from last year and a little bit of talent out of our forward-line in Salecic and Mellington, and Hutchings played a few games through the middle and Pettigrew retired as well. In what is a pretty young group, we went against what has been our normal recruiting strategy by getting Spencer and Krakouer to add some experience, and unfortunately neither has worked. That's disappointing, but at the end of the day it presents opportunities for young players to play. Through a combination of desire and his body not standing up to the training that is required, Andrew hasn’t been able to keep playing at this level and it became untenable. He has chosen to step aside from the playing side.

We are really excited that he is continuing to help us with our community programs. We see that there are some long-term benefits with that and that was a significant reason why we got him here. In fact, that probably came before the playing side. It wasn’t us deciding we wanted to get him to play and then doing community stuff, it was us seeing an opportunity to get a well-respected Aboriginal person to come in and help us with our programs, and if he was able to play it was a bonus. Internally we have always had that view, whether that's the external view or not really doesn’t bother us. We are already seeing the benefits of that. This year is the first time we have fielded a side in the Nicky Winmar Cup, Andrew has played a part in Chris Yarran committing to us whether he ends up playing this year or next, and we have another group that has sprung out of the Nicky Winmar Cup called the Djinda Falcons – Djinda is the Aboriginal word for Stars. There are 45 to 50 young Indigenous boys running around as part of that.

We think that the community engagement benefits and the potential to unearth a couple of Aboriginal players who can benefit the club on the field as well over the next few years is bigger than what impact Andrew Krakouer had on the field for us. That's the way we are looking at it and Andrew has been open and honest with us from the start. He is disappointed that he hasn’t been able to fulfil his playing side of it, and whilst some people have a slightly different take to us, the fact that he is going to play C-grade amateurs just to play with his mates shows where he's at with his footy. He will just be going out to have some fun playing footy with his mates and that’s a great way that Andrew can put back into community footy. He's really respectful of the people who have helped him get back to where he got to and for him to play community football is a fantastic opportunity for everyone. 

Q: Following the Foxtel Cup win on Tuesday, you now face South Fremantle on Sunday at Fremantle Oval in a must-win game. And despite their struggles in recent years, you haven’t done too well against them?

A: We seem to be having trouble against everyone at Joondalup at the moment. Last year as well, our away record was significantly better than our away record and maybe I should move us into those dingy change rooms down the other end that are the size of the shoe box that seem to be working well for the opposition. Maybe they get angry about how small those rooms are. South Fremantle has a lot of talent and you look at the State team that I was lucky enough to coach and they provided four players, and three of them were nearly our best three and Haiden Schloithe was the fourth and he played well too. They probably provided four of the top six players in the State game so their talent is enough. Why don’t they win more games isn’t something I can answer because I'm not their coach and don’t see them on a regular basis so it's really not something that I can comment on. What we know is that at their very best they test every side in the competition and for whatever reason they seem to be able to do that against us and have been over the last couple of years. We've had some exciting games against them and we've also been really poor against them, but sometimes they can just get over the line against us and because of where we are positioned compared to them people think it's a really bad performance. They probably have not had a really tall forward structure either and that's something that makes them different to match up on for us. It's probably their mid-sized players who have caught us out the most and that's something we will need to be on guard against again.