Q&A with Bill Monaghan

The 2020 Optus WAFL Season is just 15 days away! We took the opportunity to catch up with Senior Coach Bill Monaghan ahead of our first pre-season clash, read here

Q. Two weeks out from Round 1, how are the Sharks looking after an extremely long preseason?
Yes, mid to late November seems ages ago! Look the players have been really positive, there has been a lot of uncertainty with when we would start and what our training would look like. I’ve been really proud of the playing group and the way they’ve stuck at their tasks, they have taken everything in their stride and prepared really well. So, two weeks out, it’s exciting, we’ve got some hitouts this weekend against opposition and a very small injury list that should be up and running by round 1 so it’s exciting to finally get some footy under our belts.

Q. Our first preseason hitout is tomorrow against Claremont, what do you expect from the playing group?
Probably like the start of the season, it’s a little bit unknown. We really had to tweak our program, we came back and trained without any contact and in small groups, so it’s been a bit different in their preparation. I’m a little nervous going into tomorrow, but what I expect to see is that we are really strong defensively and working hard off the ball, while also trying to work on some better ball movement. It’s going to be a fine day; a couple of big fellas up forward and we will try and move the ball a bit quicker to create some scoring opportunities.

Q. You’ve been a senior WAFL Coach for 12 years, what was the COVID-19 period like for you?
It was really difficult at times, trying to manage with how the players dealt with it mentally, was really really strange. You know we didn’t have access to our players, we couldn’t give them any clarity around exactly what was going on and things were changing day to day. It has been a different experience, but the players and the staff have been really good with what they’ve done and completing everything we’ve asked, so it was strange but manageable.

Q. You were pretty vocal pre-covid-19, that your expectation was that the Sharks would play finals in 2020, is that still the aim?
Yes, but there is one set of goalposts that have moved, in that it is now a final 4 instead of a final 5 so that just cuts out a little bit of wiggle room for me. But look, the players have been good, we think there is some natural movement in our squad, some of our younger players with a few more games under their belt. We’ve got most of our senior players up and running this time leading into Round 1 compared to last year, Nick Kommer was on restricted time, Blaine Boekhorst wasn’t playing for the first couple of rounds, Kody Manning had come off a serious knee injury so we think we have the majority of our senior players in good condition. We think our young kids, the Tassone’s, Baskerville’s, Montauban’s and so on, have had really strong pre-seasons and will play some good footy.

Q. Can you give us an overview on the squad, is there anyone who won’t be available for the round 1 clash against South Fremantle?
At this stage Durak Tucker won’t play round 1, he had an ankle operation a while ago and he was probably on track to play August 1^st, but you know he’s probably the only casualty of bringing the season forward. Corey Holmes has had some health issues that are still unresolved, so he won’t be able to play for the moment. Other than that, most of the other guys will play both the pre-season games, we’ve got a couple that won’t probably play this week but we’d expect everyone bar Tucker and Holmes to be ready for round 1.

Q. Where do you see our improvement coming from?
We’ve worked a lot on ball movement and different personnel playing different roles. So, in a perfect world we should move the ball a lot better, hopefully get the ball into our front half a bit quicker and our big guys can kick winning scores; that’s probably where we will improve the most.