FALCONS' SEASON PREPARATION HEATS UP

WEST Perth's preparations for the 2016 WAFL season heat up on Saturday in the first pre-season match against Subiaco at Medibank Stadium in scorching conditions.

With the temperature expected to get near 40 degrees, the 2.15pm bounce down will make it difficult for the players of both teams in the grand final rematch, but the Falcons will be looking to build some momentum after a strong summer of work.

West Perth coach Bill Monaghan has been happy with the pre-season of his team, but knows every other coach in the league will be saying the same thing at this time of year.

However, he is looking forward to getting the matches against real opposition underway now as preparations ramp up for Round 1 against South Fremantle under lights at Fremantle Oval where a better result than the 35-point loss in the same fixture last year was disappointing.

"It's a great unknown and every year at every level everyone says they have had their best pre-season, everyone is running PB's and all of that. It's just hard to gauge how you compare," Monaghan said.

"You keep your ear to the ground and every club is going to improve, they have great recruits, their young kids are good and the coaches are buoyed. It's an interesting time and you never really know how it will pan out until the games start, but our focus is to have the players up and running.

"We were a little slow to start last year and in terms of some of the things that we did in terms of preparation for the players that I would change. In particular, we went down to Fremantle in Round 1 and were woeful and it took us a couple of weeks to get into stride.

"We have South Fremantle down at Fremantle again in the first game this year so we are looking at starting the season a bit better. But we also know it's a 23 or 24-week season and we can't lose sight that it's a long season and we need to plan and prepare well for 24 weeks, not one."

West Perth had a strong season in 2015 finishing in second position and then winning finals against Peel Thunder and East Perth to earn a spot in the grand final before losing to Subiaco.

While the decider didn’t go to plan, the Falcons had a season to be pleased with and as a result the need for change either in personnel or the way things are done wasn’t great.

There have been slight changes across the board but what Monaghan and the club are focused on is improving enough to be better again in 2016 than they were in all areas in 2015.

"Confident, comfortable and all those words don’t sit well with me because it's only your actions in games that count. The players' mindset and their drive and want to improve is what matters," Monaghan said.

"All I know is that if we don’t improve on last year we will go backwards and our plan is not to go backwards or to tread water. Individually, collectively, as a coaching staff and a whole football club we are trying to find ways to be better because looking back grand final day was a pretty ordinary performance.

"Whether there were reasons, excuses or mitigating circumstances, the fact was we were 12 goals behind the best side in the competition and that's unacceptable for us.

"The players are out to rectify that and we've been searching for ways to improve and we think that at this stage we are implementing ways to do that in our training. But until we play it's really hard to judge that."