Schofield proud of versatile Subiaco's responseFriday, April 17, 2015 - 10:54 AM - by Chris Pike

SUBIACO premiership coach Jarrad Schofield was pleased with his team's response to beat West Perth last week after a disappointing previous five quarters and he has every reason to expect the Lions to continue to improve with some stars close to returning.

Coming off winning last year's premiership thanks to a superb grand final performance against East Perth in difficult conditions, Subiaco picked up right where it left off to start the 2015 season with impressive wins over Claremont and East Fremantle.

However, that winning run was ended with a thud at the hands of East Perth on Good Friday with the Royals winning the grand final rematch by 64 points and then coming off that, Subiaco didn’t score last Saturday in the first quarter against West Perth also at Medibank Stadium.

That meant the Lions, in the eyes of Schofield, had played their most disappointing five quarters of football since 2013 but they responded strongly kicking nine of the last 11 goals of the game to beat West Perth by 17 points.

Now a win over South Fremantle this Saturday at Fremantle Oval will have them on top of the ladder after five rounds of the 2015 season.

One of the most important aspects that Schofield has tried to build at Subiaco is having a versatile team with players able to play a number of positions and that became crucial last week with premiership forwards Shane Yarran, Matt Boland and Chris Deluca all missing.

Brad Stevenson has played forward previously in his career, but settled in defence last year in the premiership-winning side. However, he went forward to good effect last week kicking three goals in the win over West Perth.

Schofield expects to play him back again on Saturday against South Fremantle, though, due to the fact that both the Lions need to match up on Ben Saunders, Josh Pullman and James Sellar in the Bulldogs' forward-line and with Yarran to return for Subiaco from a one-week suspension.

"All the players that play under me understand that they can be given different roles from week to week and I like to have players with versatility," Schofield told 91.3 SportFM.

"Stevo was able to show that last week but with South Fremantle's forward-line I think we'll have to look to put him back this week and with Yarran coming back into our side.

"There's some room for movement within our team and whatever task our guys are given we just hope they do it to their best so they can try to help the team get the win."

Schofield didn’t hide his disappointment in his team's performance against East Perth on Good Friday but was glad to have an eight-day turnaround before the clash with West Perth to spend plenty of time reviewing that loss, and then working hard on getting ready to make up for it.

It didn’t start well against West Perth with the Falcons leading 28-0 at quarter-time, but Schofield was delighted with what he saw over the last three quarters.

"Against East Perth I thought we were down in a lot of areas but the No. 1 thing that we were down on was our effort and intensity around the footy. We addressed that throughout the week and the positive thing was that we had an eight-day turnaround so we were able to get two quality sessions in on the Monday and Wednesday training hard," he said.

"The mindset was set in place early on in the week and we were able to then hopefully come out and perform against West Perth. I thought the effort was there early, but it was simple decision-making errors that weren’t helping us and West Perth were able to capitalise on that.

"They were up and about with the history of what happened two weeks prior and we could sense there might have been a little bit of fire in the game and maybe their emotions were up and about.

"They were definitely on in the first quarter but the reason why we've been a good side over the last 12 months is that we have the ability to stay strong in the game and keep fighting our way back whether things are working for us or not. We ended up doing that and came away with a good win."

While Subiaco is going to be without Reece Blechynden until the second half of the season and had already lost premiership ruckman Frank Stockley for the entire 2015 campaign, there is good news on the injury front.

Captain Kyal Horsley and dual premiership player Wayde Twomey are both a chance to return this Saturday to play South Fremantle at Fremantle Oval while former Fremantle player Sam Menegola and premiership forward Chris Deluca aren’t far away from a return either.

"The one we got on the weekend was Reece Blechynden and he's hurt an elbow so he's out for a good six to eight at the moment," Schofield said.

"But we are thinking he will be right after our double bye with the State round and our normal bye so some of the injuries have come at a reasonable time I suppose because we have a bye next weekend as well. 

"(Braden) Fimmano is also injured at the moment but we've got the likes of Horsley, Twomey and Menegola coming back soon, and Deluca will start to play football this week.

"We have at least seven senior players who will be putting back on the jumper in the next two or three weeks which will be a positive in the second half of the season."