Schofield excited to lead Subiaco into first finals campaignFriday, September 5, 2014 - 12:06 AM - by Chris Pike

JARRAD Schofield is entering his first finals series as a league coach with Subiaco but has plenty of playing experience on the big stage to call upon as he aims to lead the Lions to a first premiership since 2008 when he was still a key part of the side.

Schofield was an AFL premiership player with Port Adelaide in 2004 and then played in three flags with Subiaco in 2006, 07 and 08 to close out his playing career and is hoping that he can help pass on some of that experience and knowledge to a relatively inexperienced group he has in 2014.

Subiaco only has Darren Rumble, Kyal Horsley and Shaun Hildebrandt left as premiership players who Schofield played with during the hat-trick of flags between 2006-08 and even from the team that made the 2011 grand final Schofield has overseen a mass turnaround in the squad.

The Lions performed well in the first half of 2013 before having their season ravaged by injury and while it hasn’t been all smooth sailing on the injury front throughout 2014, they have been on track for a top two finish right the way through and enter the finals from second with a double chance.

Subiaco takes on East Perth this Sunday in the first finals battle between the Medibank Stadium co-tenants and Schofield is excited to be coaching a team into the finals for the first time with a grand final berth up for grabs for the winner.

"It's exciting. It's obviously a different spin on it being a coach but hopefully I can draw on some of my experiences as a player to keep the boys calm and their head in it," Schofield said.

"It's important to make sure they don’t get ahead of themselves by playing the game before it's presented to them. I'll try to draw on a few of those things and I'm looking forward to it."

Schofield will welcome back key players George Hampson, Andrew McDougall, Chris Deluca and Chris Phelan who all sat out the dead rubber final round clash with East Fremantle last Sunday that Subiaco won by 25 points.

While glad to have those players back, he will again be looking for his captain Horsley to continue to lead from the front with the 2008 premiership player in his first season back with Subiaco after time in the AFL with the Gold Coast Suns.

"From about Round 6 up until 17 or 18 he was our best player and one of the form players of the competition. He was in some good form again on the weekend after he was down a bit prior to that the last few weeks, but he will be leading from the front," he said.

"All those guys are right. George is the one who might be pushing it right to the last minute but all those other guys could have played on the weekend.

"We chose to give them a bit of a rest with some general soreness because it's been a long year for some of those guys and one of those guys is a bit long in the tooth as well. We've got some other guys that have been playing some footy in the reserves as well who will come into calculations."

East Perth only lost four matches throughout the 2014 season with two of those defeats coming at the hands of Subiaco with the Lions the only side in the competition to not have suffered a defeat at the hands of the Royals.

While that is nice heading into the second semi-final clash on Sunday with a grand final berth at stake, Schofield doesn’t expect it to count for anything once the game gets underway on Medibank Stadium.

"We are excited for the opportunity to take on East Perth on Sunday. We are looking forward to it, the guys are excited about it. Last week was a tough one because we knew where we were positioned and have for the last three weeks so the focus has been getting ourselves up for this first final," he said.

"I think both teams are very competitive and we play a similar brand of football. They have been tight contests both games and obviously we've come out on top in both, but that doesn’t guarantee that we will win this week. We just have to make sure we prepare the best we can this week to give a good account of ourselves."

Much of the talk leading into the finals has been on East Perth's West Coast-listed players and even though that likely will include Jacob Brennan, Blayne Wilson, Patrick McGinnity, Fraser McInnes, Josh Hill, Dom Sheed, Callum Sinclair, Ashley Smith, Sam Butler, Adam Carter and Brant Colledge, Schofield is just focused on the job at hand.

"I think Daws and the Eagles have been true to their word from day one when they said they would average about 12 players every week, and I don’t think it's gone beyond that during the year," Schofield said.

"If they play up to 12 on Sunday, that's great for them but we think we have a pretty good idea on who will come back but at the end of the day whoever they put out will be competitive. We just have to be prepared for that."