BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 7 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 loss to Claremont and looks ahead to taking on East Perth this Saturday at HBF Arena in the first derby of 2015.

QUESTION: It was always going to be tough coming off a five-day break and the high of the win over Swan Districts, what did you make of the game on Saturday against Claremont?
ANSWER: Early on they were up and about. They were good against Peel the week before and we expected them to throw everything at us. I thought after the first five or eight minutes we settled and got back into the game, and then had a really poor second quarter that cost us. They scored five goals to one and that was basically the game. We dominated large parts of the second half and the inside 50s were 36 to 13 but we ended up squaring off with them in scoring shots. I was disappointed with our ball use and our finishing in front of goal, but generally I thought that apart from periods in the second quarter our effort was good for the day.

Q: So it was more your ball use that hurt you, more so than the short break?
A: In the last quarter we kicked 2.7 and we had a significant advantage with the inside 50s with 20 to 9 so that would indicate that we didn’t run out of steam. I think our players had a good last quarter against Swans and in a couple of games early on we weren’t great in games late, but we've been steadily working into games and we just needed to be a bit stronger against Claremont.

Q: You tried some different things up forward with Lourey quiet for the second straight game and Fowler inaccurate, but Jay van Berlo stepped up to kick three important goals?
A: Mike's obviously getting a fair bit of attention from quality defenders. Tallan Ames is an extremely talented backman and then Brandon Franz has been in good form and is a premiership player, but what is hurting us is that he's our only genuine forward target inside the forward 50. What we haven’t been able to do is go long and direct to someone else, meaning we are sitting the ball on his head a bit. He is still competing and he took three contested marks again on the weekend and brought the ball to ground, we just need to find other avenues to goal and most of our other forwards at the moment are lead-up type forwards. We have to look at the ways that we can go into our forward 50 and be more efficient, but having said that we had enough opportunities and our forward seven players kicked 2.11 between them. Whilst all of them aren’t going to be gimmes, we still could have won the game if they kicked 6.7 or 7.6.

Q: After two games in five days, do you just try and freshen the boys up this week?
A: We've got a lot to work on and we don’t get a lot of time with our players. We've got to keep working on getting the balance right between resting and recovering, and working hard and working on structures and ball movement. We had a recovery session on Monday and probably the ones at the moment that we need to make sure we aren’t overworking are some of our young kids. The senior players are generally pretty good but there will be the odd that we will have to rest. We do have plenty of work to do, though, and we won't be shying away from that.

Q: Always a big game against East Perth and probably even more so with both teams coming off a loss?
A: East Perth have obviously been a bit up and down, like us, and have played some really good football at their best and probably some average football. That's probably pretty consistent across the competition at the moment and it's showing there's not a lot of room for error. If you are anywhere not near your best, you are vulnerable. I would expect both sides to be hurting from the loss last weekend, both sides are 3-3 and it's a crucial game. It's up here at HBF Arena and we are hoping to put in a good performance and get the win.