Monaghan with chance to cement coaching legacy

YOU will never hear him acknowledge it himself, but Bill Monaghan deserves to be considered amongst West Australian football's greatest coaches and his legacy can only be further enhanced if he can break East Fremantle's premiership drought.

Monaghan's lifetime of involvement in the WAFL dates back to his playing career where he amassed 204 games at both Subiaco and Peel Thunder between 1986 and 2001 before embarking on his coaching journey.

It started at Subiaco where he would become Peter German's righthand man for premierships in 2004 and 2006 while coaching the reserves side to flags in 2003 and 2005. 

There's no doubt he would have been as chuffed as anybody on Monday night when in the same evening he won the JJ Leonard Medal as the Coach of the Year at the Sandover Medal count when Subiaco champion Allistair Pickett was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

But Monaghan's coaching journey was just beginning. He had narrowly missed being appointed a senior coach before spending a couple of years working at Fremantle and ending up taking on the job at West Perth ahead of the 2009 WAFL season.

Over the next decade, Monaghan would become West Perth's longest serving coach, he took them to more wins than any other coach and while the 2013 premiership will be tough to top, his performance to get the Falcons to the 2018 Grand Final was nothing short of remarkable.

That West Perth coaching career is enough of a legacy in its own right, but Monaghan has now been in charge at East Fremantle since 2019 and has been instrumental in building the Sharks back up to a force, and to be the first team into the WAFL Grand Final of 2023.

Soaking in achievement of making Grand Final

Monaghan's coaching accolades and achievements speak for themselves, but it's been far from an easy ride and the fact that no matter what the clubs he has been coaching have been dealing with, for him to still get the best out of his players is without doubt his greatest strength. 

That's not to say he's not also an outstanding tactician, decision-maker and able to do everything else that makes a great coach, but quite simply any team he coaches are a tight unit, always stick together and never let any outside noise distract them.

That's why it meant so much to Monaghan what East Fremantle had achieved by winning last Saturday's second semi-final against Peel Thunder to book in a position in the club's first Grand Final since 2012 as they attempt to win a first flag since 1998.

Monaghan was still playing the last time East Fremantle won a premiership and he was yet to be a premiership coach the last time the Sharks were in a Grand Final, so it's understandable why he took a moment to sink it all in at Fremantle Community Bank Oval.

"I did need a couple of minutes and my assistant coaches were pretty happy, and ran straight down there but I had a bit of a headache coming on, it was hard work," Monaghan told 91.3 SportFM.

"I don’t know what was worse, my screaming assistants or the game. But I just sat there and reflected, and I get people asking me all sorts of questions so I just wanted to make sure my head was in the right spot and was looking at the players out on the ground.

"I was just taking a moment and it's important that we do that me individually and us as a club. It was a really good win against a really good opponent so I just took a couple of minutes by myself."

Second semi-final win over Peel

Having said all of that above, the last thing at all Monaghan will want leading into next Sunday's Grand Final at Optus Stadium against either Subiaco or Peel Thunder, both ironically his former clubs, is any focus on himself.

The Sharks finished the home and away season as the minor premiers two games and percentage clear on top of the ladder to earn the break in the first week of the finals before taking on Peel in last Saturday's second semi-final.

East Fremantle were terrific for three quarters opening up a 28-point lead early in the last quarter before then holding on for the five-point win to book in the Grand Final spot.

"It was a bit draining in the end but the boys had been fantastic for three and a bit quarters and then the floodgates for Peel opened and it was relentless attack," Monaghan said.

"The boys held on really well and there were a few things we were trying to get done in the box that were taking a little bit of time to get in place, but it was a fantastic game. Full credit to Peel, they kept coming but we had done a fair bit of work early to skip away to a good lead and then we were able to hold on."

Variety of players stepping up

Without question the great strength of this East Fremantle team is that they don't rely on any one player to win games for them, their evenness across the ground has been crucial in them reaching a Grand Final.

That was never more evident than the second semi-final win where while Milan Murdock might have had 31 possessions, Cam Eardley 30 and Fraser Turner 29, but every player made a contribution.

That started down back from captain Matthew Jupp on Josh Corbett while Lachlan Bailey was tremendous on Ben Middleton, and Finn Gorringe was important, Reuben McGuire was outstanding in the ruck and it was that team performance that most pleased Monaghan.

"Juppy's been outstanding and Cam Eardley had 12 possessions in that last quarter with four or five of them absolutely crucial putting his body on the line," he said.

"Bails has really come on and Baskerville's down there, and then you throw in a couple of young guys and Finn Gorringe was outstanding all day with his courage and his commitment to the contest. 

"I thought Reuben McGuire was up against it all day against two big ruckmen and I thought he kept battling away as well so it was a mix of our young and our old, and that's really exciting for us."

Not letting off-field issues be a distraction

What Monaghan did with his West Perth team in 2018 to reach a Grand Final despite the off-field turmoil around them was a remarkable performance so there's no coach better equipped to get his team focused on the job at hand.

It hasn’t been the easiest couple of weeks for East Fremantle with an investigation taking place into their total player payments from the 2022 season, but Monaghan is fully aware that what has taken place has nothing to do with the playing group or the coaching staff.

It also has no influence on the 2023 season. What happened allegedly took place in 2022 and any potential penalties will only impact the Sharks in 2024, so that's been the message from Monaghan to his playing group to not worry about any of that outside noise.

"It was a positive that we weren’t playing that weekend so we were able to deal with it, and the players were a little bit flat because they'd worked so hard and you don't need a reason for people to take potshots at you from the outside," Monaghan said. 

"But to process it, it happened in 2022, it's an on-going investigation and it has nothing to do with 2023, and if there are to be penalties which is still to be decided, that's going to happen in 2024. 

"So if we break it down, let's just focus on what we can control and that's our effort in the now. We can't fix or change an administrative error that happened in 2022."

Return of gun midfielder

East Fremantle also received a significant boost for the second semi-final with the return of gun on-baller Milan Murdock. He had missed five games late in the season with a shoulder injury before returning in the reserves in Round 20.

That created for its own heated meeting between coach and player with Murdock wanting to come straight back into the league side, but ultimately the plan worked because he was brilliant with 31 possessions and seven tackles in the second semi-final win.

Monaghan now has no doubt he will be a key player come Grand Final day winning the hard ball whether it's once again the Peel midfielders or the Subiaco brigade including Leigh Kitchin, Liam Hickmott and Stefan Giro.

"That's not surprising from Milan and he is an absolute warrior. He trains as hard as anyone I've ever seen, he's as competitive as anyone I've ever seen and he was actually angry that we played him reserves in the last round," Monaghan said. 

"He was proper angry, I thought he was going to fight me and he talked about how unacceptable it was. He pulled up all the records of everyone else we'd brought back after X amount of weeks, and he made a pretty decent case for himself.

"But we stuck true to what we thought was the right process, he calmed down and played a really good reserves game. We decided not to play him in the first reserves final which we could have done, and then he was fantastic on the weekend.

"There's nothing of him and he's battling against Will Brodie, Ben Hancock, Blair Bell, Brady Grey and there's some big bodies there from Peel, and he was as good as any of those guys for the day. His tackling and work around the stoppage is outstanding so we were really pleased to have him back in there."

Dealing with the week off again

There's little reason for East Fremantle to do anything different now during this week off ahead of the Grand Final given how well they have handled their last three byes during the season.

That saw the Sharks come out to beat West Coast by 184 points after the Round 11 bye, end its derby drought after the Round 15 break, and then after the week off to start the finals they won last week's second semi-final.

The only difference will be a training run on Sunday for the Sharks a week out from the Grand Final at Optus Stadium, but Monaghan will be trying to keep things as close to routine as possible.

"We have a fairly standard week for when there's Sunday games and/or byes and we'll do something similar, but we will have a training run this week on Sunday as well which is not necessarily what we always do on bye weeks," he said.

"We had a really big session the Friday before the first week of finals when we had the week off, and we did nearly a 10km session and that was kind of our last real opportunity to get a significant amount of work into the players. 

"That's a bit of a gamble when we're doing it with 20 players on the track and it's such a heavy session. We got through that and now we're into a bit more of a tapered program so we'll spread the load this week, and probably do the same amount of kilometres but just spread it over three sessions instead of two just to keep the players fresh. 

"We'll then have a look at the Peel and Subi game, and then swing straight in on Monday morning to some preparation, and hopefully sometime next week we'll get a run on Optus too which will be really exciting for the players."

Selection decisions for Grand Final

There's no such thing as a Grand Final team without some degree of a selection dilemma and East Fremantle will be no different leading into next Sunday at Optus Stadium.

Vice-captain Jarrad Jansen will return to the side after being a late withdraw from the second semi-final while Chris Walker should be fit and available for selection as well.

There are then players like Ryan Lester-Smith and Eddie Simpson continuing to make a strong case while the great intrigue is surrounding key forward Dillon O'Reilly.

He wouldn’t have played a game since Round 18, but he has kicked 33 goals in 14 matches this season so there's plenty for Monaghan and his coaching staff to think about.

"First indications are that everyone got through OK and you would think that Jansen will be available and Walker should be available," Monaghan added.

"Dillon O'Reilly is the difficult one for us because he hasn’t played a lot of footy of late. We were hoping our reserves would get through to this week and he could play, but that's now a difficult one off five or six weeks to bring someone back in. 

"But Dill's pushing his case and then there's the other guys like Eddie Simpson who has been fantastic, Ryan Lester-Smith is working into good form and you just hope like Josh Schoenfeld did a couple of weeks ago when he got his opportunity, if we need to call on them depending on who we play and the conditions, they'll be ready to go."