BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 1 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 season-opening loss to South Fremantle and looks ahead to this Saturday's home-opener against Peel Thunder.

QUESTION: Tough way to start the season on Friday night against South Fremantle?
ANSWER: Our effort was reasonable. South were very good, I think they were sharp, pacey across the ground and most importantly good with their skills. That's probably where they got us in the end. Their ball use compared to us was miles apart. But having said that, I thought that for the majority of the second quarter we really lifted and got back into the game, and even 10 or 15 minutes into the last quarter we were only a couple of goals down. If the comment is that we were very ordinary, then I think there is plenty of upside. South were good and up for it, and we were slightly off. We have some work to do and hopefully we will be better this week.

Q: Was the concern more the way you used the ball or the style they played on the night?
A: We have had a fairly lengthy discussion about our ball use and some people are saying that it was the way we used it under pressure, but the thing that disappointed me was the way we used it under no pressure. In my video review, I can probably pick up 10 or 12 incidents both entering our forward 50 or exiting our back 50 where we missed wide open targets without a South Fremantle bloke anywhere near them. It's things like that we need to fix up. Another area South were better than us at was their ability to take contested marks. Both Pullman and Sellar up front were very good for them. I thought Rodda competed well, Drew Rohde got into the game and Mike Lourey got his hands on five or six that we would expect him to clunk. There were two just about at the top of the goal square that he would take nine times out of 10 so he would be disappointed with that. It did feel at times that we were right off the pace, but they only went inside-50 two more times than us for five more scoring shots. The difference between what they gave and what we gave wasn't huge but they were clearly better.

Q: Disappointing to lose Jordan Jones with a hamstring and how's Marcus Adams?
A: Jordy will be a big loss. We're not flush with key defenders at the moment and that's one of the reasons why we are fighting pretty hard to get Tyler Keitel, but we've got some development in that area. Nick Rodda might need to go back in the short-term. Marcus is having scans and he has had some problems with that foot. The early indication was that it was a different problem but until we get the scans we won't know. Hopefully we get some good results and he is available for selection this week.

Q: What is the latest on Michael Pettigrew who was expected to return this season?
A: My understanding is that Michael has taken a job that at this stage will require him to work on Saturdays so the chances of him lining up for us are really slim. He's been away overseas for the last couple of weeks and only got back into Perth the other day, but I'm not holding out much hope that we will see him.

Q: Who is pushing up from the reserves to play Peel this Saturday at HBF Arena?
A: We think we have good depth. Take out our key position stocks and we played guys like Aidan Lynch, Brayden Antonio, Kris Shannon, Callum Papertalk, Corey Chalmers and Mitch van Berlo in the reserves, and Matt Johnson and James Batterham didn't play after good pre-seasons. We think there is a lot to like in our reserves and they just ran into a Souths side who played well and it was a cracking game in the reserves with us losing by three points. We think there's room for us to make some changes this week and four or five of those guys I mentioned were very unlucky not to play Round 1. It looked like we needed to find some more leg speed but sometimes us turning the ball over and them controlling a lot of play makes it look like that. With some better ball use and better finishing inside-50 could make us look a lot fresher across the ground.

Q: What are you expecting from Peel on Saturday?
A: It wouldn't really matter who we played this week, we are disappointed to lose first up and we have a bit of work to do to fix up some polish around the ground. We can't control what Peel gets from the Fremantle Dockers and obviously with the AFL bye leading into Round 1 players who haven't played their full quota of minutes through the pre-season will probably be available. At a quick glance that could be 15 or 16 of them and could include Michael Barlow, Paul Duffield, Danyle Pearce and some seasoned players. We are expecting a very good Peel Thunder side but we have to back in our players, prepare ourselves well and have a real crack.