BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 2 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 Saturday's strong win over Peel Thunder and looks ahead to this week's clash with Perth at HBF Arena.

QUESTION: A good win against Peel on Saturday and a strong performance against a team that had a lot of AFL and WAFL talented players who challenged you all afternoon?
ANSWER: Those comments about the strength of Peel has happened regularly since the sides went out last week, but at the end of the day we didn’t look at if Peel did or didn’t have AFL players. We were playing the Peel Thunder Football Club and whatever side they put on the park we had to deal with. That was our real theme for the week but that's not necessarily anything different from what we normally do. They had some quality players, they had some young players, they had some seasoned WAFL players and young WAFL players, but our focus was on our performance and we were really happy with that.

Q: Found a way to kick goals led by three to Kody Manning in the first quarter and Michael Lourey booting four?
A: We would have liked a few more, but we only had 39 forward entries and it was a game that was pretty much played between the arcs. It was a bit of a slog with a lot of stoppages. There were 120 or 130 stoppages and we lost the hit out count quite significantly, but our mids collectively and in particular the job Jay van Berlo did restricting Barlow in and around the stoppages was fantastic. When the game did open up, both sides moved the ball quite well and we did kick a little better in front of goals and that hasn’t always been the case, and we haven’t always had multiple goalkickers. But Mike with four, Kody with three and Meadows popped in with two so that's a pretty good return from three of our forwards who were stationed down there all day.

Q: When Andrew Strijk gets it 38 times and uses it pretty well, he can be a real game changer?
A: We've been using Andrew over the pre-season as more of a mid and forward, and just with the way the game was being played we thought we could use him across half-back so we moved him there in the second half and he helped set up our play. Whilst he will agree that his kicking wasn’t at its very best, when you have 30 kicks you are allowed to have a couple that don’t quite hit the target. Our ball use went up from 53 per cent against South Fremantle to 66 per cent so the things we need to happen to play the game on our terms certainly worked. We took less than 50 marks against South Fremantle, but took 100 against Peel so being able to control the game and play at the tempo we wanted was a big factor in us coming away with the points.

Q: Made a couple of big calls at selection dropping premiership players Marc Crisp and Ray Bartholomew. Happy with the end result of the changes to the side?
A: It's really difficult as a coach to make sure you get the balance right between rewarding guys who have gone to battle for you before and done the job, and promoting some kids with a bit of enthusiasm. I expect both Ray and Chipper, and Trent Manzone, all to push back in and play senior footy again. They're not the first guys to be dropped and they won't be the last. It's never an easy decision and one thing we know, bar our big men stocks, is that we have good depth through our mid-sized and small players. We collectively made a decision in match committee that we probably need to reward those guys playing well in the reserves and make sure that people know they have to be at their best to hold their spot. That's healthy for any side. What we don't want to do is breed instability and we don't want people panicked about their spots, but especially in Round 1 we left between three and six blokes out of our side who deserve to play. We were fairly confident with the guys coming in that they could have played the week before so it wasn’t as if we were going to the bottom of a dry well for some players to come in. You would now think that the majority, if not all, of the players from Saturday will hold their spot after a very good team performance. 

Q: What are you expecting from Perth back at HBF Arena on Saturday?
A: What Perth showed this week against South is that they had a real crack and that's something that all coaches demand of their players. Maybe they didn't get that against Swans. As we do on a weekly basis, we don’t plan for what the side we are playing doesn’t do, we plan for what they are capable of doing and we expect a spirited, and competitive Perth. They haven’t used the ball overly well the numbers would suggest in the first two rounds so I think Earl will think that if they can tidy up their disposal that they will improve sharply. We will need to be at our best to beat them.