BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN STATE GAME Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan will be conducting a weekly question and answer segment for the club's website. Here he gives his thoughts on the WAFL's State game win over the SANFL and how preparations are going for the WA Day Derby against East Perth on Monday at Medibank Stadium.

QUESTION: Ended up with just the two players in the State team's win over South Australia and Aaron Black and Andrew Strijk were two of the best players on the ground. How'd you see their games?
ANSWER: I only watched about half of the game. I had a keen interest mainly to see how our own guys did and I probably missed the bits when Blacky was a bit quiet in and he only had a couple of possessions in the first quarter. I thought his run after that was good and Strijky was his usual self across half-back, and was good both offensively and defensively. It was great that both those guys got the chance to represent WA and that they had a win because that's really good for our competition. The way state footy has gone over the last two or three years now WA can legitimately claim honours of being the best state league, so that's really positive and it's good for all WAFL clubs and the whole WAFL competition.

Q: You obviously coached the WAFL team last year to the win over the NEAFL in Sydney. Does that make you feel part of the success that they followed on with on Saturday?
A: I wouldn’t say any extra than I would anyway. It's a long and demanding season, so it was a really good opportunity for myself and the players to sit back and destress for a little bit. We gave the players from Friday to Monday off, and they worked pretty hard last week and will work hard leading into East Perth. It's really important that because the players at this level commit a lot of time, and yes a certain select players get well compensated for that, but most of the players don't and there are guys who play a whole season of reserves and train from November to September, and get no financial reward. So when we can we like to give them time off and a bit of downtime to give them a bit of a break from me mentally and physically. That was more about that for the weekend, but I couldn’t help but turn on the live stream and look at the stats more so to see how Blacky and Strijky were going.

Q: Second 16-day break now for the group in a pretty short period of time. How do you tackle that and now how do you get ready to play East Perth on Monday?
A: We try and get things as normal as possible. Last week we did a couple of things differently, but this week we try and get back into exactly the same pattern as we would leading into a Saturday game. It's not ideal having 16-day breaks but we were able to cope with it albeit fairly late against Swans so hopefully we can have the same sort of success this time.

Q: You have had a fairly substantial injury list particularly to key position players. Anyone you expect back to take on East Perth?
A: We expect Marcus Adams to play and given the amount of work he's done, and the physical condition he's in he will come straight back into the league side. It's been well put on record that we've gone into most games a little light on our talls, but it has seemed to have worked for us too. In that period we weren’t focusing on who wasn’t there, it was more about how we can win with the side we had on the field. Joe Morrow's had a really good past fortnight in the reserves, Tyler Keitel is getting closer and we've got a little bit more firepower in our talls to pick from. That doesn’t make it any easier at selection because we made a couple of changes against East Fremantle, and the guys who came in performed on a windy and sometimes wet day. I thought our performance against East Fremantle was really good so selection's going to be tough. We are probably still five or six weeks away from seeing Jordan Jones, Max Alexander is out of his boot and should start running in a couple of weeks and Shayne Zanetti is still a little bit out with his back but we are hoping he can play some sort of footy in the next week or two, and potentially here in the next month or so.

Q: The East Fremantle win was probably as close to a four quarter performance you've been able to put together. Are you confident this two-week break won't hurt that momentum?
A: Momentum is a word that is bandied around a lot and I'm not sure it's a reality. All we can do is prepare the best we can, pick the very best side we can and focus the players who will play to put in their very best performance. Whether it's a 16-day break, a five-day break or four weeks, it doesn’t really matter and the process is the same. From all reports East Perth are highly disappointed in their last two or three weeks of footy, and the word on the street is that they are going to be fired up for what is usually a great clash between traditional rivals on what is now WA Day.

Q: Their last five quarters, one against you and then four against Claremont, were really disappointing. What are you expecting them to throw at you come Monday?
A: First of all it's a personnel thing. Lee didn’t play against us last time and neither did Colledge or Anderson. They are likely to get Xavier Ellis back against us, Jack Darling might be close and so might Matt Rosa. Mark Hutchings and Scott Lycett played us last time, then didn’t play against Claremont and might play against us again. We could get them with seven or eight AFL-listed players different plus Brendan Lee to what we faced last time, so we are under no illusions that at their very best with the East Perth and Eagles personnel, that they can be a handful for any side in the competition and they've shown that this year when they have had strong teams in. whether there is fireworks or any extra intensity in the game I doubt it, I'm expecting a fired up East Perth side who want to right a couple of bad weeks of footy. We need to be on guard for that and at our very best because when we have been we've been very good as well.