BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 3 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 79-point win over Perth and looks ahead to this Saturday's clash with reigning premiers Subiaco at Medibank Stadium.

QUESTION: What do you take out of a win like that. We know that Perth are battling but to win by 79 points was it an important stepping stone?
ANSWER: It was. We probably kept them in the game a little bit in the first quarter but what I liked with Perth last week from what I saw against South Fremantle was that they have a crack. I think teams would be foolish to underestimate them, but the longer the game went I just thought our physical presence and the bigger bodies and a bit more experience helped. I was really happy with the way we played but we will probably need to be sharper against the better sides.

Q: How pleasing was it to actually put the opposition away with the nine goals to two in the final quarter?
A: I think it's going to be a tight competition this year and this week we moved from fifth or sixth to second just on percentage. It's important that when you've got a side on the ropes that you finish them off and our forward-line functioned really well. The last quarter was really pleasing and Andrew Strijk pushed forward to kick a couple of goals and so did Rasmussen, but I thought the work of our forwards was pleasing. Lourey competes hard and then with Meadows, Manning, Potente and Johnson they were up and about with their defensive pressure.

Q: Michael Lourey gives you something you probably have never had in your time as a forward who can take a strong mark and kick a bag of goals?
A: He's a really strong lad who presents well and the early indications are that he has straightened us up. What we have to be aware of is that some sides might not know a lot about him but I'm sure if he keeps kicking goals like he did last week with four and now six this week, then he will attract some more attention. Hopefully he will draw some good attention from quality defenders and that will bring other players into the game as well.

Q: Must have been happy with the spread of goalkickers?
A: It's been on record that we have really tried hard to be better with our forward movement. It's something that obviously last year we were really poor at. The indications are that we've got better every week. Meadows hasn’t played a lot of footy, Johnson hasn’t played a lot of footy and Lourey is new to the system so hopefully we continue to improve in that area. What we have to be careful of is that we don’t get overconfident that it's just going to happen. There is still plenty of work to do on our forward-line.

Q: The other good thing about the forward-line working is that it allows Nick Rodda and Marcus Adams to hold down the two key defensive posts?
A: Both compete really well and that's what we ask of them. They are both big bodies but importantly they are good at ground level as well, and are good at following the ball up. It worked well last week and worked well this week, but again just because it works for a couple of weeks doesn’t mean it will every week. Everyone needs to keep working hard at their game and we expect that the opposition's big bodied forwards will at least get some strong competitors against them. I was really pleased with both of their efforts.

Q: Chris Keunen was back to his best form with 50 hit outs against three Perth tall players in Power, Latch and Eyres?
A: From the outside I don’t think Chris is valued as highly as we value him. It allows us to pretty much go into most games with a one ruckman policy and then try to scrap and bite with a makeshift ruckman backing him up, and Drew Rohde did that reasonably well this week. That's probably the downside of pushing both Rodda and Adams back is that we don’t have that genuine forward who can pinch hit in the ruck, so that's something we need to work on. But Chris was outstanding with his effort and that followed up from last week when he got two significant corks in his butt cheek but was still able to compete. He is a high valued player here and he really helps us set up around the stoppages.

Q: Aidan Lynch has played in the Foxtel Cup before, but he made an impressive WAFL debut in the midfield?
A: I thought early he was slightly off the pace and he looked really nervous before the game. Sometimes you don’t really want to make a point of that but he looked like he was really nervous. It took him a while to settle and he had two or three ball handling errors which is usually a strength of his, but in the second half we actually pushed him to Tropiano and I thought it was an interesting ball. Both were hard at the ball and I think Lynchy had 11 or 12 in the third quarter playing directly against Tropiano who had eight or nine. Lynch also had seven or eight clearances in the third quarter alone. We think there's a big future for Lynchy but he needs to build on that and not think that it means he has made it as a league footballer. There's plenty of work for both him and us to continue to do.

Q: Nice to win a milestone game because that hasn’t always been a strong suit in recent years. Good for Andrew Strijk in his 150th game?
A: It has been an interesting one. We don’t keep the exact records of it but it feels as though it goes that way. You don’t want to make a fuss of that but you also want to reward the players who have been around. If you make a big fuss of Andrew Strijk's 150th then maybe Chris Keunen feels a little cheated that we didn’t do the same for him in Round 1. Our intensity and effort around the ball the last two weeks has improved significantly, and I don’t think that's directly related to Andrew playing his 150th game but I'm sure he's pretty happy that we won.

Q: Looking forward to playing Subiaco next Saturday?
A: It's a really good opportunity for us to test ourselves against what I still think is one of, if not the best, sides in the competition even though they weren’t great against East Perth. Probably with what's gone on over the last week or so there might be a little extra interest in the game, but as I said to the players after the game we can't control what people say, do or write about the game. Our focus is to play our very best footy and we'll be trying to do that against a quality outfit who will be on the rebound from a poor performance.