Dawson wants hurt from grand final loss to spur on RoyalsThursday, March 20, 2014 - 2:47 PM - by Chris Pike

EAST Perth coach Brian Dawson is ignoring all the focus on the Royals' partnership with West Coast and is simply down to business about trying to go one better in 2014 than last year's grand final loss to West Perth.

Dawson was in his first season as coach of East Perth in 2013 and made an immediate impact pulling together a side that in the past had been talented, but inconsistent and hadn’t played off in a WAFL grand final since the last of its premiership hat-trick in 2002.

However, the 2010 Swan Districts premiership coach was able to get everything to click to beat Swan Districts in the first semi-final, Claremont in the preliminary final and then only fall short against the Falcons in the grand final in a premiership decider that was right up for grabs midway through the third quarter.

While outside the club much is being made of West Coast's partnership with East Perth, inside the club it is the last thing of concern and Dawson couldn’t be happier with how the relationship between the Eagles and Royals has worked so far.

His focus, though, is on getting his East Perth league side performing well on the field in 2014 and while it's hard to judge just what impact it has, he is hoping the players that played in last year's grand final loss will be spurred on this year even more to go that one extra step.

"It's great to make grand finals and they are even harder things to win still, but when you get close and end up coming up short certainly it stings," Dawson said.

"That really does need to drive you on going into the next year. That doesn’t really mean anything or make guarantees, but certainly you need to take that hurt away with you and it needs to be a factor in the way you prepare yourself going into the next year."

Even though there has been a fair turnover in players at East Perth coming into 2014 with regular league players Aaron Sweet, Ryan Maldenis, Mat Seal, Brock Higgins, Jacob Derickx and the retired Michael Swan among the departures, Dawson has been happy with how everything over the pre-season has gone for the Royals.

"It has been a good pre-season. We've done some good things and some players have certainly put in some good work, but now it's time to see if it can all come together," he said.

"We haven’t changed a lot really aside from trying to refine a few more points about the way that we want to play.

"We've locked in on that pretty solidly right from day one of pre-season back in mid-November. We haven’t done much of a different program to what we ran last year other than tweaking a few different points about what we actually do in the sessions."

One player returning to East Perth in 2014 is key defender Nathan Blee.

Blee shot into prominence with an outstanding WAFL season for the Royals in 2011 and subsequently was drafted by Port Adelaide.

Now after the last two years with the Power, the 23-year-old is back with East Perth and Dawson has been tremendously impressed with how the defender is looking.

"Nathan has settled back in really well," he said.

"He is an East Perth boy going back to before he was drafted by Port Adelaide so he has slotted back into the group really well, and trained strongly over the pre-season.

"He has already shown his poise and class in our pre-season matches and we look forward to him having a really good impact for the team this season."

As for how the whole process of working with West Coast is going, Dawson has been happy with it so far and sees no reason why he won't continue to be.

"It sits quite OK with me and I wouldn’t say we are sick of the talk about it. Perhaps it will be a talking point for most of the year, but our theory is that it is what it is, and we will just get on with it and let our actions speak on the field," Dawson said.

"We aren’t in the business about making too many comments about it, but we think it will be a positive relationship for both club's point of view and we will be working hard to make sure that's the case.

"We've had some of their development coaches being regular fixtures at our training session's right from the start of pre-season. Adam Selwood will be our midfield coach this year as well as doing his West Coast duties so we've had a fair exposure to the Eagles and we are pleased with that, embrace that and encourage that.

"That's the way we think the partnership should go so we have been very happy to have the likes of Adam, Daniel Pratt and Jaymie Graham at times come down to our training sessions and work with our players."