BILL GETS GRILLED – BILL MONAGHAN Q & A

WEST Perth premiership coach Bill Monaghan will be conducting a weekly question and answer segment each week during the 2014 WAFL season for the club's website. Here he talks about the selection of the WAFL State squad that will play the NEAFL in Sydney on Saturday May 24.

QUESTION: Before we start here is the State squad put together so far: Luke Blackwell (Claremont); Bradd Dalziell, Steven Dodd, Tom Howlett, Jamie McNamara, Brock O'Brien, Rory O'Brien, Andrew Stephen (East Fremantle); Paul Johnson (East Perth); Paul Bevan (Perth); Ryan Cook, Ashton Hams, Ben Saunders, Haiden Schloithe (South Fremantle); Lachlan Delahunty, Chris Deluca, George Hampson, Chris Phelan, Wayde Twomey (Subiaco); Tallan Ames, Blaine Boekhorst, Ryan Davis, Tony Notte, Justin Simpson (Swan Districts); Jay van Berlo, Jordan Jones, Chris Keunen, Kody Manning, Shane Nelson, Laine Rasmussen (West Perth).

With your West Perth WAFL and Foxtel Cup commitments, have you had much time to seriously start putting your plans in place for the team?

ANSWER: The State program is really interesting because I go to games of footy when West Perth is playing and my focus isn’t necessarily to look at who is going well for the opposition or not. We have a fairly large network both on the selection committee and we are enlisting help from recruiters and other people around to make sure we are considering all the people who are in good form.

It has been a little bit interesting for me at this stage and it is taking up a little bit of my time, but my primary focus is to work at West Perth and make sure we are doing everything right. We had a selection meeting earlier this week and we ended up putting a squad of 30 together, but the general feel amongst the selectors is that we have a large number of players who are midfielders, running half-backs and lively forwards, but on paper the hard part at the moment is the key position players. We think there is only a small number of key position players who are not aligned to Peel or East Perth. They both have a plethora of key positions players, but we can't pick them. Most of the sides in their forward-lines there isn’t a lot of genuine key, tall forwards.

Other than fitting 15 potential midfielders who deserve to be into the State squad and wilting that around to eight or 10, which is a challenge, finding enough tall timber is the most difficult task at the moment. We probably will need to go for some flexibility of guys who can play in the ruck and swing forward or even down back. Josh Smith hasn’t played for a few weeks now and Tim Geappen had a late start to his pre-season after changing his mind about playing a couple of times, and those guys are usually pencilled in for the State team but we need to figure out whether their form or fitness means they should be in the squad. We have to work out how much weight we give to previous State performances or if someone won the Bernie Naylor Medal last year if they should be in the State squad. A lot of our discussions are around that.

Then in terms of genuine ruckmen in the competition, there are a couple of good young kids running playing some decent footy but probably Chris Keunen and Paul Johnson are the only two mature ruckmen I can think of who are in the frame at this stage. That's not to discount someone else popping up. Lleyendekkers was going well at Perth before getting injured and a few of us have been impressed with a young kid Darcy Cameron at Claremont, but you have to wonder if they are ready for State footy yet. That's the other dilemma we've got.

WITH CHRIS PIKE