Q & A with Bill Monaghan

Senior Coach Bill Monaghan answers some burning questions ahead of our 2020 pre-season.

Q1 Thoughts/Reflection on 2019

It was successful in a lot of ways, albeit winning 5 games for the year. It was always going to be tough. We lost 3 players that had finished in the top 5 of the Lynn Medal, some by choice others not. I thought the leadership group stood up and bought into the program. We are significantly more advanced than we were twelve months ago, with myself and Brad Dodd (Football Operations Manager) having been in our roles for a year now.  

Q2 On recruitment, you are looking for players to compliment & add to the group, where do you see that we need to add depth to the squad?

We did a fairly extensive list management of our current squad and identified the areas we thought we needed to target. The top 2 or 3 sides have a number of what we would call ‘A-Graders’, we really only have 2 or 3. We are focusing on the development of our own players and just adding to the top end of our list. One of the things we didn’t do well this year was win a lot of the footy. If we can add some depth mainly through the midfield, with a couple of players who can bank 25-30 touches a game, it should hold us in good stead going forward. Our stocks down back got a boost last week with the signing of Durak Tucker. Cameron Davidson and Lachy Bailey are coming along nicely, and I think Matthew Jupp and Dylan Winton were good all year.

Q3 The focus in 2019 was on stopping other teams from scoring, will offensive be a focus in 2020?

When you take over a side that has only won two or three games, there are 101 issues you need to fix. We focused a lot on team defence this year, and while we didn’t rocket up the ladder in defensive stats, we did take a big step forward. In the first five games, it didn’t look like we had done a lot, but I thought in the last 13 games we reigned in the scores against and the numbers looked a lot better. The discussion between the players and coaches is that our growth will now come with ball movement and attack. We are really looking forward to having Luke Strnadica and Cameron Loersch consistently up front. With Loersch injured for much of the year, we weren’t able to see him at his best. In the earlier part of the season when Jonathon Griffin was injured it was also taking Strnadica out of the forward line as a target. We do need to get better with ball movement and bring the ball down - if you can have more supply and predictably in the forward line you are going to be better.

Q4. What are your Expectations for 2020?

My expectation is that we will further improve and if things go well, like keeping everyone on the park, we should be aiming for finals. We believe if we can work hard and do things in the right way, we are a chance to play finals, and that then becomes a whole other ball game.