BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN ROUND 13 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 hard fought win over South Fremantle and looks ahead to this week's International Football Festival clash with Subiaco at HBF Arena.

QUESTION: What did you make of that win over South Fremantle?
ANSWER: I was really disappointed early on when they kicked three first quarter goals and even though they all came from free-kicks, we speak about that and they're all there. It's not the fact that they kicked three goals from free-kicks and whether they duck or lead with their head or not, we have tried to minimise giving away those free-kicks. The rules will say that it's us that need to protect the bloke going for the ball, but once we got on top of that and stopped them spreading from stoppages, I thought we started to control the game quite well. It was probably just our accuracy in the second half. Tyler missed a couple from a gettable range and we missed three from the pocket. They still had to screw them around the body but Lynch, Meadows and Potente all missed three goals from probably a combined 10m out from goals. It became a little harder than I think it needed to be, but South are a good side and defend hard. I watched them last week against Subi and they were able to negate their run and there was a lot of congestion this week, and it was good to come out with a win.

Q: Given how tight the whole competition is at the moment, how important was this one to open up a bit of space between you in second spot to the chasing pack?
A: Of course it's important but I guess the hard part is that in a competition where the fixture isn’t even, we now have nine games to go and two of them are against Claremont, and two of them are against Swans. The fixture keeps throwing up different things every week and if you were allowed to bet and you were a betting person, you wouldn't have thought we would hold onto second spot last week with the bye but we did. All we can do, and all we can continue to tell the players, is to focus on what we can control. That's a cliché that all coaches will use but that's the crux of it. I think 10 wins will probably get you in the finals and 12 or 13 will probably sew up a top two or three spot. It looks like Subi are going to be hard to catch, but you never know. There's a number that we are trying to get to, but we are doing that a step at a time. We are lucky now with our fixture that we have another bye, so we'll have three in six weeks and we just have a little mini-season, and this was a tick beating South Fremantle and next week we'll come out and have a crack against Subi. It will probably give us a good indication of where we sit in the bigger scheme of things.

Q: Apart from the finishing, you really dominated the second half so you must have been happy with how you played?
A: We've been pretty happy with the way we are playing. We know there are still some areas of the game we need to improve on and I thought our ball use at times in the first quarter and then later in the game, we kept trying to switch the ball and the wind didn't suit that. We're relatively happy with the way we are playing the game and we've had some ins and outs. Marcus continues to improve and has had an interrupted season, Kody's missed a couple of games, Tyler's only new, Joe Morrow came back in after not playing much league footy over the last few years. I thought collectively as a group if we were the under-9s, I'd probably give it a team effort. I was really proud of the way the boys played against good opposition.

Q: Kody Manning is probably one of your most important players with his presence and ability to kick the ball?
A: He is a fantastic competitor and does kick the ball nicely. Luke Meadows is very similar and we think Matthew Johnson has got similar traits although he probably doesn't attack the person with the ball quite as hard as those two. Kris Shannon's growing as a player and I'm not on the final numbers, but I think we only had 11 of our 2013 premiership side out there so it's amazing in 18 months the turnover we've had. It's basically a whole new forward-line and that takes a little bit of getting used to for the players. Mike Lourey continues to provide a target and not everything's going his way. He was probably out three or four times and didn't get used, so we think there's significant improvement in that half. We just have to keep defending well and kicking winning scores.

Q: Adams and Rodda were terrific down back shutting down Pullman and Sellar?
A: They both are big strapping young lads and they like playing close together. Physically you always know you will get a good contest out of them. I thought Luke Tedesco and Steven Browne were fantastic at ground level and the other guys down back were good. To only give up three goals after half-time and eight for the day is a pretty good effort whilst having 26 or 27 scoring shots ourselves. I'm really happy with the work of the big guys down back and the small.

Q: Good to see Joe Morrow make the most of his chance?
A: He's worked hard and he is a natural athlete so doesn't need much to come on in terms of fitness. We think that at his very best he can play and it's been a steady build with him playing four or five games in the reserves after basically not being able to do any pre-season. We all just want Joe Morrow to play steady periods so people can see the potential we've always seen in him. We were buoyed by what he did this week and he did enough to suggest he will be useful for us especially given that Kerr and Jones are both very doubtful to play for the rest of the year. We're still exploring a couple of things with them though. The easy thing with those two is that the season is finished and we can just go down one path, but with nine weeks of the season left before finals we should be exploring everything to make sure the season is not a write-off. But Joe can probably play tall back and as an outside mid, so his versatility will be really useful for us.

Q: All set up now for a clash between the top two teams against Subiaco now this Saturday at HBF Arena?
A: I watched them against South last week and I had an eye on two sides, so it killed two birds with one stone. I think a lot of sides are just trying to clog it up, but Subi kind of get you just with their weight of numbers and big bodies. They're not kicking huge scores to win at the moment so that's a conundrum for us whether we try to close it in and make it a slog where we don’t kick enough of a score, or do we continue playing the way we are. It's funny the last two or three years all we've focused on is defence and the competition has probably become based on defence. We are probably trying to do the opposite and find ways to score more. It's exciting times and the players will embrace the challenge this week.