WAFL coaches gear up for 2016 season to beginThursday, March 17, 2016 - 10:48 AM - by Chris Pike

THE 2016 McDonald's WAFL Premiership Season begins this Saturday with four Round 1 matches all in the traditional afternoon time slot.

Ahead of the season opening round, WAFL senior coaches (two assistants) fronted the media on to talk about their prospects coming into the new campaign.

Round 1 will see South Fremantle play West Perth at Fremantle Oval, East Perth take on Claremont at Medibank Stadium, East Fremantle host Swan Districts at ATOM Stadium and Peel Thunder battle Subiaco at Bendigo Bank Stadium. Perth has the bye.

Here is what each coach had to say ahead of the 2016 season:

CLAREMONT
ASSISTANT COACH KEPLER BRADLEY

Transition from playing into coaching?
It's pretty exciting. It's the first time I have ever coached a team and I'm coaching the reserves so that's been pretty interesting. I'm really enjoying it and I'm just trying to push the boys onwards and upwards again to hopefully play finals again in the seniors.

Did you always see yourself getting into coaching?
I never thought about it during my career but when I did my knee in my last year at Freo it gave me the opportunity to work with a few of the young guys down there. Ever since that year in 2014 I was pretty keen to coach my own side. Now that I'm here I am just as nervous as a player and I just want to hop into it and get the boys some results, and hopefully push them up for senior selection.

Difficulties waiting for Claremont Oval's redevelopment?
It has been tough for two or three years now but our new facilities are going to be ready later on in the year. It's a little bit of pain now for long-time success. We have had a pretty good pre-season and have got a few players to our club to strengthen our midfield and we are blooding young guys who are going to be even better this year. We are in pretty good shape and it doesn’t matter where we train. We are pretty determined to not let what happened last year happen again when we lost our first five games. We are determined to get the whips cracking straightaway.

EAST FREMANTLE
COACH ROB WILEY

What attracted you to coach East Fremantle?
It's great to be back and it's fantastic to have the calibre of coaches that we have in the WAFL so I look forward to getting back into it. Really just the chance to coach in my own right is what attracted me to the role, plus family. It's been a really interesting time and enjoyable since the 9th of November. The boys have been fantastic and they didn’t like where they finished last year so they are doing everything in their power to try and improve.

What's the difference being a senior coach again?
I suppose the biggest difference is you have to make the final decision and I really enjoy that where I can draw on my experiences but also the experiences of the young coaching group that has been assembled at East Fremantle. In coaching there is no right or wrong and it's just about making decisions that is best for that group. The challenge for me has been learning about the group. Walking into a club and not knowing basically anyone is a challenge when you have to learn 70 or 80 names within a couple of weeks was an experience in itself. Working with the young group and using my experience is certainly challenging but it's also very enjoyable.

EAST PERTH
COACH JAYMIE GRAHAM

How do you feel coming into your first game?
I'm a little bit excited, a bit nervous at the same time. We have been preparing pretty hard since November and I'm excited about Round 1. I remember the feeling as a player and I've probably got the same feeling as a coach. I just want to see how our game plan holds up, we've been working hard on it and I'm looking forward to getting Round 1 out of the way.

How much of an influx of West Coast players are you expecting for Round 1?
This weekend we could have up to, I suppose, potentially 17 available. But whether they all play is another thing. We need to obviously respect the partnership and like others, select with some integrity. We'll have those challenges throughout the year and we'll deal with it as it comes.

Craig Wulff about to break the club's games record on Saturday?
Wulffy bleeds black and blue. He is the heart and soul of the club. Obviously the pressure that he provides us is outstanding and he just leads by his example. Wulffy is trying to play this weekend like he always does, but it is a big week for the club and I'm sure he will get his opportunity and I'm looking forward to seeing him lead the club.

PEEL THUNDER
COACH CAM SHEPHERD

Taste of finals last year?
We were really excited to play in the finals in 2015 and it's a new year now, with new challenges. We are looking forward to the challenge and we'll be pushing pretty hard with a young group and hopefully consolidate our position in the top five.

Glad to welcome back Rory O'Brien?
Rory lives in Halls Head and he started his career at Peel. He wants to give something back and he's eight games shy of 100 with the club. It was just a good fit with Brendon Jones retiring and losing Leroy at the start of the year so that left us a little bit short in experience. We need that experience. Gerald Ugle is our captain and he's 23 so we are pretty young and needed a bit of old man in the side.

How many Fremantle players are you expecting this Saturday against Subiaco?
It's yet to be confirmed but it will be substantial I'd think. We haven’t sat down at the selection table and we'll do that Thursday when we should know. But we are anticipating fielding a pretty strong side against Subiaco on Saturday.

PERTH
COACH EARL SPALDING

The off-season seems to have been really positive?
We have obviously changed a fair bit of personnel. We have had a few outs again which has been a bit of a trend but we've got some top end talent in and they have set some really good standards on the track, which had to happen. The group's pretty buoyant and they get along with each other pretty well. We had a good win on the weekend so confidence is pretty high and we have a weekend off, which I don’t know is good or bad, and we are just looking forward to getting into Round 2.

Some big signings including Clint Jones and Angus Graham?
Clint is probably the highest profile guy we've got in and he's been fantastic around the group. He has been pretty quiet and I've had a couple of chats to him, and he just wants to earn the respect of the group before he starts having an impact verbally. He is just setting some standards at training that everyone is going along for the ride with. I think in the past at the club we have tolerated guys, because they have a bit of talent, not putting in at training and not having that excellence in mind. But now are getting to the stage where we have a young group that have stepped into leadership roles and they aren’t tolerating that anymore. We will keep turning over a few guys if they aren’t working hard to be the best players they can be. Clint has certainly added to that and big Gus is off hiking with his old man in New Zealand at the moment so I just told him to make sure he doesn’t fall off a cliff. He is a really likeable bloke and has a bit of size about him, and that's something we lacked last year. Spencer White also comes in and he's only 21, and this is an opportunity for him after having a lot of adversity growing up. He is probably here to grow up and he is a likeable kid. He might be frustrating along the way but he has a lot of high end talent with speed and marking so hopefully a goal sense too.

SOUTH FREMANTLE
ASSISTANT COACH ARTHUR MASKOS

Second season with Todd Curley at the helm?
Obviously we've got a very young group but we are looking for steady improvement from that group. And having TC going into his second year, it was a new game plan last year with the new coach so this year most of the guys know the game plan. We are just going to extend that and hopefully the younger players do come along and improve to give us a little bit more winning.

Happy to welcome four players back from the AFL?
It's great to have four of them come back to the club. They probably didn’t have the AFL careers that they expected but they are all very keen to make an impact back in the WAFL, and hopefully give themselves an opportunity to get back. Mason Shaw is tracking along really well after an injury-interrupted career at Port Adelaide. He is looking very strong now and is out to make a big impact. Blaine Johnson is a hard worker and I think at WAFL level he will have a major impact. His work ethic is second to none, it's fantastic.

SUBIACO
COACH JARRAD SCHOFIELD

The chance at a premiership hat-trick?
All the supporters would love to see it and the club would love to see it, but it hasn’t been a focus of ours. We know that when you have won the last two you are going to be hunted even more so by all the other clubs so all we have been focusing on is making sure we keep improving because as we saw last year the competition was fairly even. We were able to come away with the premiership but we know this year is going to be even tougher. That hasn’t been a major talking point but if it happens it will be fantastic for the footy club. We just want to make sure we get there first.

New look forward-line?
Last year I think we had the best defence and our attack was well documented so losing Yarran to Fremantle leaves some big shoes fill and Matty Boland as well. You have to expose the young fellas that have been playing in the twos the last couple of years and we still feel like we've got a pretty competitive forward-line with Halligan who kicked 30-odd goals last year. We've brought in Ben Sokol from South Fremantle who kicked 50-odd goals in the twos and has kicked two bags of five in the pre-season. And then we've been able to bring in Hamish Shepheard who has been on an AFL list. As a key forward, we feel like he can make a bit of a difference to us but we need a collective group to make sure we kick enough goals to win. We just have to make sure we get the right mix and we have had to tweak the game plan to accommodate some of the new faces.

SWAN DISTRICTS
COACH GREG HARDING

How are you guys shaping up for 2016?
We've been focusing on kicking goals. It's been pretty simple for us. We think we were pretty good last year but just didn’t score enough. We averaged 80 points a game so our whole pre-season has revolved around hitting the scoreboard more.

Not ending up having Ryan Crowley?
Well we didn’t have him to start with so it's not a big hole to fill to be honest. We've replaced him with Stav (Steve Malaxos) as a coach and we were really lucky to pick up a senior player Freddie Clutterbuck. We got Crowls because we wanted a big-bodied midfielder that accumulated but who was an on-field leader as well with Geappen and Davis out. We think we've got that in Freddie Clutterbuck. He has 100 games of experience at WAFL level and he's a real pro, so we think he's going to have a really good year. We've got Graham Jetta back as well who has played a significant amount of WAFL footy, so we are happy with where our list is at.

WEST PERTH
COACH BILL MONAGHAN

Feeling heading into 2016?
It's a funny time of year where we are excited to be about to play, we're a little bit nervous and apprehensive about the changes we've made to the game plan and some new players we've brought in. But we are ready to go for this weekend against South and we look forward to a fantastic season.

Revenge on your mind for the grand final?
That gets spoken about a fair bit externally but it's probably not how we focus it. We are extremely disappointed with the finish to our season last year and a lot of things didn’t go the way we planned for them to go, and if we had our time again we would change them, but revenge is probably not the right word. Our players are motivated and I'd like to think that their personal pride after getting a bit of a touch up in the grand final would mean that their motivation is strong. But we work on what we can change and effect, and we can't change or effect what happened last year. Our focus has been on looking to areas to improve. We look at Subiaco and say that they do a lot of things well and they are the benchmark, but I'm sure if you ask all the other seven coaches they all think they are going to play finals, they've all made improvements, they've recruited well and have brought kids on. Just to focus on Subiaco would be the wrong thing to do but at this time of year without playing opposition, it's about challenging ourselves and working out what we can do better.