BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN GRAND FINAL Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan looks ahead to this Sunday's WAFL Grand Final against Subiaco at Domain Stadium discussing the selection decision he is weighing up, and where the Falcons needs to improve to turnaround the result from the second semi-final.

QUESTION: You might have one or two spots opened now, and you've got the likes of Jordan Jones, Ray Bartholomew, Corey Chalmers and Luke Meadows trying to break into the team?
ANSWER: The Jordan Jones one in particular is going to be really interesting for us. I said to him on Friday night at our last training session that in a bizarre way given his body size, it's probably a gamble that we have to look at against Subiaco with their strength inside with Menegola and Phelan. I would think we'd struggle to get him to play as a key back but he comes into calculations. Ray ruled himself out this week and I let him make the decision, and he made the right decision. He knew that was the right decision, we knew that was the right decision and to Ray's credit he put the team before himself, and if someone is prepared to do that it's our job that we give him the opportunity to play again next week. So I think those two along with Chalmers and Meadows are in the mix so the good thing is we have four players available who are fresh and would all add significantly to us.

Q: What's the feeling now that you are in the grand final. Is it a feeling of the job not being done or nerves or excitement, or a combination of all that?
A: For me it's amazing even in the last four or five minutes of the game we swung into what we need to do for next week, and were looking at moving people off the field, what our training would be like. For me it's business as usual and there's a school of thought that's how we need to deliver it to the players as well, but the players could afford to sit back the night after the game and reflect on the great achievement to make a grand final. But we'll make sure they don’t think the job's done and I'm pretty confident that a proud bunch of players aren’t happy with what we dished up in the second semi against Subi and there will be a good response.

Q: In some ways is it good that you saw Subiaco at its best in that second semi-final, so now you know what the challenge is to try and stop in the grand final?
A: That's going to be the hard thing, judging how good they were and how poor we were. The answer lies somewhere in the middle of the two I would suggest, but history would be littered by sides who don’t perform well in a second semi-final and are able to turn it around, but we are under no illusions it's going to be a huge task for us. But the players will be up for it, we'll plan accordingly and we'll give it a red hot crack. And if we are good enough to get the chocolates at the end then that's good, and as long as our players put in the required effort then I'll always be proud of them.

Q: Subiaco has a different ruck set up and it worked for them with Clancy Wheeler and Lachlan Delahunty in the second semi, will you try anything different to try and counter that in the grand final?
A: That's something that we clearly have to look at with our whole stoppage structure, but at the end of the day Chris Keunen does a wonderful job against a variety of ruckmen, and most of the time he does it on his own. Again this week he had a two-minute spell and I'm not sure how long Paul Johnson had off for East Perth, but it was probably similar with Lycett not playing. We'll continue to back Chris in and he's a really valuable player for us, but he will need to understand too that his performance is something he has to take responsibility for what happened at the clearances last time against Subi. Not only did Wheeler and Delahunty win more hit outs, they were productive at ground level and we need Chris to right that, but we need VB, Nelly, Blacky, Kerry, Lynch and all those guys to play through the middle to be better at the clearances.

Q: Do you feel as though there is a lot of pressure on Subiaco now going into the grand final after the dominant season they've had, or do you not get caught up in things like that?
A: I actually don’t buy into it. I think if you look back over the last two grand finals we were able to beat East Perth as rank outsiders and Subi did it last year. I don’t set betting markets and I don’t control other people's opinion, my job is to have a plan for my players, to educate the players over a period of time to implement that plan and we'll back ourselves in. In some ways, it's absolutely irrelevant to me and the players what other people think. It's what we think and I made a comment after last week's game that it's not personnel that was our issue, it was our mental state and that's what we fought coming into the prelim. I was really proud of the way the players were able to process that to turn it around. Even at quarter-time, yes the breeze was blowing clearly to one end but for us to have the mental capabilities to come off a pasting the week before and being down four goals to one, I think it would have been easy for lesser groups of men to say it was too hard and that they are gone. But for them to steel themselves in the second quarter to get back on an even keel, and then in the third quarter into the breeze that was a huge performance and we gave it everything. We kept thinking about the next contest and that's what we'll do again this week.