Defensive mindset to return for West PerthTuesday, March 20, 2018 - 9:31 PM - by Chris Pike

THEY might have lost some quality and experience from their tall brigade, but West Perth coach Bill Monaghan is confident some youth and returning to a stronger defensive mindset will continue to have the Falcons around the mark in 2018.

West Perth again reached finals in 2017 but that was only on the back of a stirring last round victory over Claremont before an unceremonious exit the next week at the hands of Swan Districts at Steel Blue Oval.

In some ways, it was the end of an era for a West Perth team that had won a premiership in 2013, made a grand final in 2015 and then also reached finals the previous two seasons – but really that is only on the surface.

The reality is the majority of the West Perth playing squad in 2018 will be similar, it just happens that the two biggest omissions just happen to perhaps be their two players they could least afford to lose from last season.

Over the course of his 95-game career whether playing as a key defender or forward, Nick Rodda had made himself invaluable for the Falcons. Scott Simpson did the same on arrival in 2017 and he ended up cementing himself as the team's No. 1 ruckman.

By doing so, he allowed Tyler Keitel to settle up forward, for Rodda to shift from forward to back and even Michael Lourey and Mark Hamilton spent time at both ends while Simpson held down the ruck.

Suddenly everything changes dramatically with the absence of Rodda and Simpson in 2018, with really them needing to be replaced from within despite the arrival of Mitch Dzelebdzic from South Fremantle.

A reliance will be on Chris Keunen to return to No. 1 ruck duties should his body hold up but Monaghan won't hide from the fact that they are two big losses.

"We have lost a couple of senior players in Nick Rodda and Scott Simpson who have departed," Monaghan told 91.3 SportFM.

"Nick decided to move to Melbourne for work and he is playing for Williamstown for this year so we are hoping he goes well there and will return at some stage. 

"Scott just decided that football's gone past him a little bit in what he wants to do with his life so he's off travelling and doing some work. They are our two major departures."

The news isn’t all bad obviously entering 2018 for West Perth with the positive feelings topped off by the brand new facilities being up and running at HBF Arena.

Matt Johnson and Laine Rasmussen have returned after being away from the club in 2017 while Dzelebdzic could be an option in attack crossing from South Fremantle.

But really Monaghan is most exciting to the blooding of some young players coming through the ranks.

"Connor West is a terrific young fella and was probably unlucky not to be rookie-listed. He's come through our colts system and played State 18s last year," he said.

"We think he is going to be a really good player for a long period of time should he not get drafted so I would expect him to play some senior footy. We've got another young kid, Tyrese Miller, who is an exceptionally talented player. 

"He has to work on his efforts and repeat efforts, and how hard he works off the ball, but he's a left-footer playing in our front half and has more talent than most guys at our club. They are two good young players we've got coming through the system. 

"Sam Rotham is training really well and has played some league footy previously before some injury concerns. And we have a young fella called Liam Tedesco who played State 16s but decided he didn’t really enjoy playing footy and went to play with his mates at Wanneroo. 

"He has come back and at 19 years of age is an absolute beast. I don't want to put too much pressure on the kid but he has probably been the standout of the guys who have come to the club.

"We expect him to play a lot of senior footy. He is a really solid kid, runs well and those sort of guys need to step up. They're all local kids and we hope they play a lot of senior footy."

Going back to West Perth's premiership year of 2013, they conceded 83.4 points a game. They missed the finals in 2014 but that number dropped to just 72.0 points a game before in 2015 it was 72.4 in another grand final year.

Then in 2016, West Perth gave up 71.9 points a game but Monaghan felt a change of style might be necessary to be a little more attacking for the Falcons to take the next step.

The result was them scoring more in 2017 at 79.7 but the unfortunate consequence was giving up 91.6 points. That was only better than East Fremantle and Perth who won six games between them.

Monaghan has worked hard over the summer on getting that defensive mindset back.

"We based our game for a number of years on being really strong defensively and we had a fair amount of success on that," Monaghan said.

"But last year we tried to tweak it and we were trying to move the ball a bit quicker to play a more open and free style of footy. 

"It probably turned out we scored two or three more goals a game in 2017 than we had done the previous years, but the flipside was we couldn’t control the defensive side of our game. We had too many big scores kicked against us. 

"We are just going to tweak it back the other way and we think by focusing on our ball movement last year, that will help. But we will have a more defensive mindset because we were giving up too many points last year. 

"We still want to try to score and we think the game needs to look good and the players like scoring, and the fans come to see scoring, but 90-odd points a game is too many. The players have been really good with that and they understand we can't get goals leaked on us every week."