BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 9 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 strong 32-point win over East Fremantle that improves the Falcons to a 5-3 record in second position heading into the State game break.

QUESTION: Must have been happy with a win like that, pretty much a four-quarter effort in tough conditions against a strong opposition?
ANSWER: Yeah the conditions weren’t great but we are blessed out here at HBF Arena because the ground conditions were OK considering the amount of rain, I'm sure some of the other grounds wouldn't have been able to drain the water as well as we do here. It was mainly having to contend with it being difficult to judge where the ball was going, but I thought the players' intent for the majority of the game was fantastic. It was always going to be a contested ball type game in these conditions and we haven’t gone that well against East Fremantle up here in recent history, so it was great to win and we can now sit back over the bye and enjoy a little bit of time off before we start again to look forward to playing East Perth after the bye.

Q: As close to a consistent four-quarter performance as you've had after a couple of stunning comeback wins?
A: We are getting closer to that and some of the guys coming in haven’t played a lot of footy over their careers like Rohde has played a handful of games, same with Meadows, Rotham and Lynch so they are only getting better. Kris Shannon was a late withdrawal for us on Thursday night as well so we are exposing a lot of kids to games and that is one of the offshoots to having a few injuries and we are excited about that. I think they will be better the more games they play as well.

Q: Must be happy going into the break in second spot at 5-3 considering the injuries you've had to key position players?
A: We are aware that there has been a couple of losses of key position players but it's not something that we focus on. That's something we can't control so to speak and we are more about focusing on the guys in the side and making sure they work hard, play their role and that might sound clichéd, but it's all we can do. We can't control who we've got available so our attention is spent on players who are there to do their job, and I've been very pleased with the development of some of our young kids as a result.

Q: Finding plenty of avenues to goal now as well and were able to kick 16 again without a massive contribution from Michael Lourey?
A: We've made no secret of the fact that we've tried to move the ball better and Mike Lourey has obviously had a positive effect even though over the last two or three weeks he hasn’t kicked that many goals, he continues to draw the best defender and then allow Rodda when he went forward, Fowler and those type of guys to feed off someone who is a genuine power forward who competes hard, and where he is meant to. We haven’t had that in my time here until now and we would like him to take more catches and kick more goals, but clearly he has straightened us up as a team and is making it easier for our smaller forwards to get to where the ball's going to be more often. Kody Manning got a crumbed goal and we are getting more out of our midfielders in terms of goals as well. That's not by accident, we've worked hard on improving in that area.

Q: How do you tackle this 16-day break heading into the WA Day derby with East Perth?
A: It's our second 16-day break this year now and we will give the guys a couple of days off this week, we'll train a couple of times this weekend and have the State weekend off. While that sounds great to the players, they will get a fair intensive session on the Thursday night before the long weekend. Monday night is generally a recover type night but next week we'll up their volume of training a little bit given then taper that off over the course of the week leading into the game.

Q: Of the West Perth players in the State squad, would you expect them all to end up playing?
A: I think all of them deserve to play but that depends on the State selection panel and it depends on what they want. It wouldn’t surprise me if they all played but it depends on what the State selectors want. There are probably a handful of guys right across the competition who still need to prove their fitness as well and I have no doubt that if all of those guys played from West Perth they will give a good account of themselves, and they will give it a real crack. There are also a couple of other guys who aren’t in the squad who I think could have played. Kody Manning's not getting a lot of the ball, but this week his effort was very good again. But we'll wait and see who plays and hopefully Harro might be able to get a few West Perth boys across the line.