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 how West Perth's Foxtel Cup and WAFL campaigns are shaping up.

QUESTION: Starting with the Foxtel Cup win last week, you must have liked what you saw with a big win to qualify for the grand final?
ANSWER: We did. Obviously the Western Storm had a really good first game against West Adelaide and whilst we wanted to expose some of our kids, I guess we were a little nervous to make sure we picked a side that we thought we could win. To all the players' credit, the guys we put out there were fantastic whether it was guys in their first game or guys on the periphery of playing league footy this year, they all performed very well and it showed that the future of the club is in good hands with those players coming through. The luxury we had was that the senior players who we did pick like Keunen, Guadagnin and Kerr were able to play bit parts and we tried to expose our kids to carrying most of the load to see where they are at. That was very pleasing. 

Q: You now know that the grand final will be in Geelong against Williamstown on Tuesday July 22 before you face East Perth that weekend. Where do you sit on that?
A: It's a little hard to judge yet because we have a couple of weeks of WAFL footy to get through first. We now know that we are going to play down at Geelong and that we will fly on Monday, and fly home on Wednesday and we know where we are staying. But in terms of the side we pick, a lot of that will depend on where our season heads over the next couple of weeks. We need to be very mindful that at the moment East Perth is not budging on moving the game from Saturday to Sunday afterwards, which is what we have requested. We need to get through a few other things before we worry about the Foxtel Cup and the side we will pick, but we are excited to be there and it's also a great opportunity for our kids to get the chance to play against what looks to be a wonderful side in Williamstown. It's going to be a great challenge for whoever we take.

Q: It was a disappointing first quarter against South Fremantle on Sunday defensively, but from that point on you dominated both defensively and in attack to end up winning by 62 points?
A: It's clear to everyone who watches us and looks at stats, that we have been really sound throughout the year defensively and clearly we haven’t been as productive in our forward set up and ability to score. We have spent a lot of the last two or three weeks trying to find ways that we can score more. Whilst I was angry at the players for what at times was a lack of respect to their defence in that first quarter, it's understandable because just about all our training has been geared around our attack. It wasn’t surprising to me that the players went into the game with the mindset of attacking more, what the conversation at quarter-time was about was that it didn’t give them a license to disrespect defence. The focus was on getting the balance right and the players to their credit took that on board, and adjusted quickly. That's the beauty of having strong defensive foundations and I wasn’t asking them to do anything defensively that we hadn’t practiced or implemented over a couple of years. It was just a matter of reinforcing that.

The only other thing is that when you do play South Fremantle, a lot of sides end up in shootouts against them and that seems the style of play they are happy to play with. And that's their choice, I'm not fussed if that's how they do it but we find that when we play South that it does become a free-flowing, end to end and high-paced game. We fell into that a bit in the first quarter because you get good looks going forward so the players all get excited, but then turn the ball over and they are out the back door. We adjusted, though, and finished really strongly and whilst I was happy with our improved offensive performance, we are still a long way from getting that right and we have to do that on a consistent basis. The framework looked a lot better, but again we need to kick better than 19.19. That seems to have been our issue all year being unable to kick accurately on goal so there is still plenty of work left for us to do. We are under no illusions that it's still a work in progress.

Q: Nick Rodda and Matt Johnson were both outstanding up forward combining for eight goals?
A: They confirmed our thoughts on both of those players. We think that they are exceptionally talented kids and both are only 19 years of age. They both could have played colts footy last year as well but played senior footy instead. It doesn’t surprise us when we see them perform like that because we see them week in, week out and see the strengths that they've got. It's just a matter of as 19-year-old kids of it clicking, and it did on Sunday. The lesson for them and all young players is that just because it happened one week, doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen in the future. They just need to stay grounded and work hard, but hopefully the West Perth supporters and members saw that the future of their football club is in pretty good hands if we can get Nick and Matt playing that sort of football consistently.

Q: Unfortunately Steve Potente injured his knee, but you have a number of players in the reserves desperate for a spot in the league side?
A: That's a double-edged sword for us. One is that it's fantastic to have that depth and we saw it on show in Foxtel Cup so we have a large number of players capable of playing league football. Most of them 18, 19 or 20 year of age so we are excited by that, but the flipside is that there needs to be positions in the senior side for them to step into. It's a challenge to keep them motivated when there isn’t a spot available and to make sure they see value in being part of a quality organisation that they want to stay out and go through the hard yards which a lot of players need to do at the start of their careers. We are really buoyed by the performances of our reserves and the colts are playing a great brand of footy as well, and have turned things around. We are starting to have some of those kids train with the senior group as well and Tyson Moulton played reserves last week. That's all part of the development process. We are working hard in those development areas to make sure that when the senior players eventually exit at the top end that we don’t have to go to the well of needing to recruit. That's something that we are really strong with and we are seeing some good results of that through the reserves and colts.

Q: You play Swan Districts this Saturday at HBF Arena. They have become a big rival, both teams have a lot riding on the result and it shapes as a massive contest?
A: Swans and us have some really good battles over my time as coach and the rivalry is getting stronger. We seem to get Anzac Day and a few other big occasion games including some finals over the last few years. Both supporter bases are really passionate and we've had some really good tussles with them and it's probably been pretty even. This week is an absolutely vital game in the season for us and obviously Swans have got their eye on a top two finish so they want to make sure they win enough games to get there. I would expect that on NAIDOC Week that it will be an absolute cracker of a game, and we will be working our butts off to try and make sure we come out on the right end.