Monaghan knows WAFL must be at best to beat NEAFLFriday, May 23, 2014 - 10:22 AM - by Chris Pike

WAFL State coach Bill Monaghan is happy with his team's preparation to face the NEAFL on Saturday at Blacktown in Sydney, is happy with the side picked and is now just looking forward to trying to lead Western Australia to a victory.

After leading West Perth to the WAFL premiership last year, Monaghan has the honour of coaching the WAFL State team this year up against a team from the NEAFL which features players from clubs in NSW, the ACT, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

The game will be held at Blacktown in Sydney and bouncedown will be at 12pm local time, and 10am WA time. The game will be broadcast on a live stream via the NEAFL website – www.neafl.com.au.

Monaghan is proud to be the coach of the WA side and is taking the role seriously knowing that the expectations are of a strong performance from the WAFL coming off wins over the SANFL and VFL the past five years.

"My view is that we have an obligation as coaches, selectors and players to uphold what the WAFL stands for. The WAFL competition has been great over a number of years, we were able to beat the Victorians for the first time in 20-odd years last year so there is a great expectation on us to perform at a high level," Monaghan said.

"I'm excited about coaching the very best players in the competition and whilst there are some people who think we could have selected different players, what we've done is select a side that we think will gel together and be able to cover anything the opposition put at us. I'm excited about that.

"I'm excited for the West Perth players who are in the side and there are some veterans playing who love State footy and have been on AFL lists, and there are a fair few debutants as well who can't wait to get out there. It's an exciting time and I'm sure all the boys will put in a great performance."

The WAFL v NEAFL State match was originally fixtured to take place at Spotless Stadium as the curtain-raiser to the GWS Giants v Richmond AFL match, but it has now been moved to being a standalone fixture at Blacktown.

Monaghan isn’t too concerned by that, though, and at least he knows the Blacktown facilities having coached West Perth in a Foxtel Cup clash there in 2012.

"You have to finish the curtain-raisers an hour before the AFL game as well and the crowd really does only roll in over the last 15 or 20 minutes before bounce down. It would have been a 10am start, so we would have been battling to get 300-400 people in the crowd which would have steadily built up," he said.

"In the last quarter, we may have got 3 or 4000 but the facilities at Blacktown are first class. It has been used for AFL matches in the past and Foxtel Cup matches so the venue itself is great. The main difference is that we will get on a bus on Saturday morning and it was going to be a 20-minute ride, but now will be an hour. The flipside is that it was going to be a 10am start and now it's 12pm so the players can probably get an extra hour's sleep in and we won't be so rushed in the morning.

"To get at a venue for a 10am start, we would have been there by 8.15 and up for breakfast by 6.30 which is 4.30am Perth time. In some ways, it's a better time to be playing so it just depends which way you look at it. You can look at it as a positive or negative, and my view is that it doesn’t matter. We are playing for WA and will go out there to do our best job."

In terms of the opposition, Monaghan certainly expects the NEAFL to be more than competitive and he has no doubt that the WAFL will need to play at their best to win.

The NEAFL squad features the best players from clubs in two states and two territories with some recognisable names including Eddie Sansbury, Ben Rioli, Cleve Hughes, Ryan Brabazon, Jacob Derickx and Will Sierakowski.

Considering a combined Queensland/Northern Territory side only lost to WA by six points in 2011 at Bendigo Bank Stadium in Mandurah, Monaghan certainly knows that this team representing the NEAFL should be superior to that squad.

"I am expecting a very good side to be put out on the park. They have a sprinkling of ex-AFL players and they get to pick from a competition that spans two states and two territories. In terms of the quality they can put on the park, we are expecting a very good side to be up against us," Monaghan said.

"That is an emerging market and the number of ex-Victorians and even their native players to Queensland and NSW, who traditionally would have had to go interstate to play at a state league level, can all play in that one NEAFL competition now.

"There are always some people capable of bridging the gap between the non-traditional and traditional states. I'm expecting them to have a very good side with some pace, size and strength, and anything but our best performance will leave us vulnerable."