JONES IN THE MIX AS FALCONS FOCUS ON REJUVENATION

JORDAN Jones is in contention to be a surprise inclusion for West Perth in Sunday's WAFL preliminary final against East Perth at HBF Arena as the Falcons try to inject some fresh legs for what will be their 11th consecutive match since their last bye.

West Perth's last bye was way back in Round 15 with the Falcons playing the last eight games of the home and away season without another break, but they were able to secure second position on the ladder having won 13 of 20 games.

West Perth then proved too good for a weakened Peel Thunder side winning by 109 points in the qualifying final at HBF Arena, but it was a tired looking outfit in the second half of last week's second semi-final against Subiaco with the Lions kicking 13 of the last 16 goals to win by 55 points.

West Perth also suffered some injury concerns in the loss to full-forward Michael Lourey, ruckman Chris Keunen and Sandover Medallist Aaron Black, and while the trio look more than likely to play in Sunday's preliminary final, Monaghan might look to change things up a little.

The West Perth reserves were also a tired looking outfit in the second half last Sunday night conceding 10 of the last 11 goals to Swan Districts to be eliminated, but one player who looks fresh is Jordan Jones.

The 2013 premiership player injured a hamstring in Round 1 under lights at Fremantle Oval against South Fremantle and then just as he was getting close to resuming training, it was discovered he had a badly broken finger that required surgery.

Once he had overcome that, he resumed training and was looking good before again tearing the same hamstring and that appeared to rule him out for the rest of the season, but his recovery has gone well and he was able to return in the reserves last week.

Given it was his first game since Round 1, it's a big call for Monaghan to select him for the preliminary final but it might be on the cards particularly if any of the trio under injury clouds don't pass fitness tests ahead of the game.

"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," Monaghan said.

"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."

Monaghan is confident that Lourey (ankle), Keunen (knee) and Black (corked thigh, sore neck) will all get themselves up to play on Sunday with a grand final spot at stake, but he simply doesn’t know for sure until they have their fitness tests at the final training session of the week.

"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," he said.

"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."

Freshening up the playing group is a focus to try and get some run back into their legs for Sunday's clash with the Royals, but for Monaghan it's more important to rebuild his players' confidence following the loss to Subiaco last Sunday.

"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," he said.

"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."

With a grand final spot at stake, the game being at HBF Arena, broadcast on television and against East Perth all make Sunday an exciting occasion for the preliminary final, but Monaghan and his players are just trying to solely focus on the job at hand.

"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," Monaghan said.

"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."