BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN SEMI-FINAL 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 second semi-final loss to Subiaco and looks ahead to Sunday's preliminary final against East Perth at HBF Arena.

QUESTION: You started so well on Sunday but as the game wore on, it just looked like you were a side who was tired from playing 10 games without a break. Is that how you saw it?
ANSWER: I think sometimes when the game is clearly not going well and you are chasing, and you can't win clearances you can look a bit tired, jaded and slow. When you lose all of a sudden the knocks and bruises seem a little bit worse because you are mentally down as much as anything else, but I think the second quarter took a lot out of us. They just controlled field position and we couldn’t touch the ball, we couldn’t move it into our forward-line and got belted at clearances. Everything went against what we were after and in some ways the scoreline flattered with us only two goals down at half-time. But it took a lot out of us and we just weren’t able to mentally or physically push through it in the second half. It was a disappointing day but we will recover well to freshen them up, and hopefully come out with a renewed vigour this weekend.

Q: The two players you could least afford to lose are Chris Keunen and Michael Lourey, how have they pulled up after coming off injured?
A: I would think they are more likely to play than not, but if that's 51-49 or 90-10 I'm not really sure. We iced Mike up fairly early and he was clearly restricted, but he's been in a moon boot and the word from the physio is that he should play. Chris just got a knock on his knee so we don’t think there is any structural damage and he is well in calculations to play.

Q: Aaron Black came off sore as well and was able to keep playing on, then he copped a heavy hit in the last quarter but he'll be right to go?
A: The biggest issue with him will be the whiplash suffered from the knock. It was a credit to him that he stood back up and he's lucky that he has a big solid melon on the top of his head. He is brave and kept pushing through, but in the end we would have liked to ice him up too. But we had to fight the game out and keep putting him back out there. I would think he is a certain starter.

Q: Do you focus on this week on just trying to get some run and freshness back into the guys, and trying to keep them from doing too much out on the track to help that?
A: This time of year it's more about some touch and getting the players feeling good about their training, and a little bit of structural stuff. We'll pretty much back in the systems we've had in place all year so we won't do much, but we wouldn’t have if we had a bye three weeks ago either. It's not something we are going to focus a lot on, my main concern is that mentally we need to recover from the weekend. It was a kick in the guts getting beaten in the second semi-final so we'll work on that as much as anything else.

Q: East Perth has found their best form of the season now leading into the preliminary final, what are you expecting from them on Sunday?
A: They move the ball extremely well and they are clearly using some of the processes that have been used at the Eagles. Defensively they've been really solid, they are getting a lot of run from half-back and moving the ball well through the middle of the ground. And then they've got a number of options in the forward half as well, so we will need to be at our very best but when you get down to the last three that's normal. You don’t sit there thinking you are going to have an easy game, it's a prelim final and both are fighting for a spot in the grand final. We are up at HBF Arena which is always in good nick, we should get a good crowd and we are even on television so that should make it more exciting for people who can't make it to a game.

Q: Like you said it's a massive day. You are playing at home in a preliminary final against the old enemy with a grand final spot at stake, do you get excited ahead of occasions like this?
A: Finals time is always exciting, but me as a coach and hopefully the players feel that excitement but we have a job to do more importantly. We have to make sure we come prepared to implement our game style and offensively, and defensively restrict East Perth. Finals is a great time to be playing and it's down to three and there are six other clubs who would love to be playing this week, and after Sunday it's down to two and we may be the one that gets flipped out, or that goes through. We'll be having an absolute red hot crack to do the best we can to qualify for a grand final.

Q: Jordan Jones returned in the reserves on Sunday night and looked good despite having been out for so long. Is he a realistic chance of playing this week?
A: That's obviously going to be a big discussion at match committee. He did everything that we would have required of him the other day, but I didn’t have huge expectations on what he was going to deliver. I would have just loved him to have one more run and I would have been able to plot it with some certainty. What we will do is give him a fairly heavy work out on Wednesday night in our main session against a couple of other guys who aren’t really in mind for a game this week, and he probably needs to show us that he can play on a leading forward or someone whose second and third efforts are good. He did most of his best work on Sunday as an inside midfielder and we're not 100 per cent sure that's what we will need him for in our side. That's obviously something we think he can, it's whether this week is the week that we really want to use that or not. It's another name on the board that will cause us a few headaches come selection night.