BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 4 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 loss to Subiaco and the build up to the Anzac Day Monday clash with Swan Districts after the bye.

QUESTION: Congratulations on the milestone to be the longest serving West Perth coach ever. Did you know it was approaching?
ANSWER: I didn’t know the exact number of games I was up to and exactly how many Stan had coached, but I knew that six years was the time that he coached for. It took me a little bit into my seventh year to catch him, but it's not something that I really focus on. It's something that I am proud to have achieved, but at this stage it isn't something that I will focus too much on. I've been really proud to coach West Perth and at times we have struggled a little bit, but hopefully in the time I've been here we've had some success and hopefully there is more in the future.

Q: Another 43 possessions from Shane Nelson against Subiaco?
A: Sometimes Shane is criticised for his lack of impact on games but if you are going to sit there and see what he can do on the inside, he had 14 clearances and seven tackles to go along with his 43 possessions. When it gets a bit wet and greasy, his ball handling stands out compared to most other players and he was fantastic but like everyone, was disappointed we couldn’t get across the line. We just need to keep battling on in the next couple of weeks. 

Q: You dominated the first quarter obviously. What changed after that to allow Subiaco back into the game and to end up winning?
A: It was a game of complete contrasts. We were outstanding early with our pressure and ability to get the ball into our forward-line. We probably didn’t capitalise fully in that first quarter and kicking 4.4 wasn’t a good result from the dominance we had. Then from about halfway into the second quarter it started to turn and all the things we were doing well, Subi started to do well. It was a real game of field position. Whoever had it in their forward-line was able to keep it there and the conditions changed, and it got a bit wet and sloppy. We hardly got the ball inside the forward 50 in the second and third quarters which makes it really difficult to score. We had two inside 50s in the second quarter alone so on paper it appeared our forward-line didn’t function, but it's hard to function with only two inside 50s.

Q: The numbers suggest you probably should have won the game. What can you put your finger on?
A: Statistics are something that coaches use and it's how we measure things. Statistically it's not a game that it looks like we should lose. We had more possessions, more contested possessions, we won the clearance count, we won the tackle count by 30 and I listened to some AFL footy on Sunday and the commentators said that rarely do you have a game where you win both the tackle count and the contested ball. Well we won both those stats significantly but it was more our inability to move the ball out of half-back into good position that was our problem. We had 85 tackles to 55 and people will say that's conditions or because we weren’t winning the ball, but we also had more of the ball. It's a really hard one for us to put our finger on, but the most important stat is always the score and we didn’t come out in front in that and that's all credit to Subiaco.

Q: What do you do with the two-week break now before playing Swan Districts on the Anzac Day holiday Monday?
A: It's a 15-day break and we actually gave the guys a few days off to let them refresh and recharge a little bit, and then it was back to the grindstone. We worked long and hard over the pre-season on improving our ball movement and I think in our four games there has been glimpses of that being very good and it's just a matter of keeping the players' confidence up so that hopefully the consistency of that for four quarters each week starts to come. We are disappointed with how we performed but we're not going to lose faith that we aren’t on the right track.

Q: Any players in the reserves getting close to a call up?
A: We've got a significant number of injuries in our senior squad so our reserves have copped it a little bit the last couple of weeks. We have eight or 10 injuries at the moment and most of them are key position or tall players, and that's an area we are lacking in and we don’t have a significant number of them in the reserves to fill that void. We played a first-gamer in Sam Rotham against Subiaco who I thought was very good, but he is coming off 10 colts games last year and three reserves games this year. We are battling a bit with big man numbers but hopefully we start to get some back after the bye. Jordan Jones is still a couple of weeks off, Marcus Adams is another four or five weeks off, we hope Shayne Zanetti will play after the bye, Seva Martin is out for the year and Max Alexander is out for a significant number of weeks. We think our smalls and mids are OK with our numbers and Corey Chalmers is one really pushing for selection even though he had his two front teeth knocked out against Subiaco and will miss the next four or five. We just have to back in our players who have been doing the job and looking in the reserves there are Bartholomew, Manzone and Crisp who are senior players not far away from pushing back into the senior side.

Q: Must be a relief to finally have Tyler Keitel given permission to be cleared to West Perth?
A: It's been a long drawn out saga and it's not something that anyone is really happy with, both the footy clubs, the footy commission and Tyler himself and his family. It has been eight or nine weeks in the making and a couple of processes weren’t followed, and arbitration got involved. The arbitrator has ruled for the second time that he is eligible for a clearance under a rule that is black and white so he has been given permission to be cleared. It's really disappointing for the kid and we are lacking in a couple of talls and we think that Tyler can play league footy in the short-term for us and the medium to long-term if he doesn’t get drafted. Hopefully that is finally sorted out so he can now start training with us and get back playing footy which is what everyone wants.