BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 12 Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan will be conducting a weekly question and answer segment for the club's website. Here he reflects back on some of the positives from the last up win over Peel prior to last week's bye, and looks ahead to playing South Fremantle on Saturday for the Garlic Munchers Cup at HBF Arena.

QUESTION: Your back-line is looking solid as well now with Marcus Adams back, Nick Rodda there and Sam Rotham able to be the third tall defender, not the No. 1?
ANSWER: We are trying to get the right mix down there and we think that Rodda and Adams can still play both ends for us, and so can Tyler Keitel so that gives us good flexibility. Marcus and Rods are still relatively young men, and Sam is only new to his craft and Tyler has just made his debut so there's still some inexperience there, but the good thing is that they are all good sizes, mark the ball well and are really competitive. Our big men stocks are in reasonable nick at the moment. Hopefully Jordy Jones will be back within the next month and Max Alexander a little bit behind that, and Joe Morrow is pushing hard for senior selection. We are a lot better placed with our talls than we were four or five weeks ago.

Q: It looked like it was just about Kris Shannon's best game with 27 possessions?
A: His numbers are exceptionally good considering he came off with probably 20 minutes to play and couldn’t return because of a slight niggle in a hamstring. Kris has shown a lot of potential and excitement over two or three years now, and this year it's been steadily building. It was a bit of a breakout game for him and I think he had 19 possessions up to half-time and looked really dangerous. We are still working on some issues with him around delivering the ball, but he is in a unique situation that not many people have to deal with which is having to run at speed, process all the information and kick the ball well. We encourage him to run and that may, in some ways, make the decisions and skill execution a little harder for him, but we saw some really positive signs from him on the weekend and hopefully he will get up for the South Fremantle game. Him and Matt Johnson, in particular, test a lot of sides with their raw leg speed.

Q: What are expecting from South Fremantle as an opponent on Saturday at HBF Arena?
A: South started the season really strongly and they belted us pretty much in all areas of the game. They were a lot sharper around the ball, and our ball handling and ball use was terrible. It was a Friday night and we came off a six-day break from playing in the rain the week before, and we just weren’t as sharp and we probably got our timing wrong by a week or so. But having said that, South was very good and they continued that form for another couple of weeks after beating us. They then hit a bit of a speed hump but their last couple of weeks have been very good again. They have a good blend of experienced players who all know how to find the ball and Schloithe is back now and he adds another really good player through their midfield and half-forward. Kelly is also back now after missing a couple of weeks so probably the only one that it looks like they are missing from the outside is Ben Saunders. We expect that they are going to be a very tough side to get across and we learned a few things from playing them last time, but that was back in Round 1. This time we get them up at HBF Arena and we are playing for the Garlic Munchers Cup so we are looking forward to that and we'd love to get one back on them for what happened in Round 1.