Coach Post Match – Todd Curley Round 11

WHAT South Fremantle coach Todd Curley had to say following the Round 11 WAFL loss to Subiaco and looking ahead to this Saturday clash at Fremantle Community Bank Oval against the West Coast Eagles.

QUESTION: You haven’t been in this position for a long time, probably last year’s preliminary final where you’ve lost a game quite comfortably. What did you make of it?
ANSWER: We’ve been pretty good for a while but whether or not we rolled into the game, I’m not sure, but we certainly didn’t adjust early and made some silly mistakes which allowed them to score early. Then we were playing catch up from there. They were probably much better and harder at the footy than us for the majority of the game, but I thought our boys in the second half hung in there and kept fighting. But at the end of the day, I think the scoreboard is a pretty good reflection of the game.

Q: They played in a really wet game too two weeks ago and handled it well while you haven’t played in a game that wet all year, did that have any sort of impact?
A: Maybe, I don’t know. But we made a lot of simple skill errors, dropped marks and didn’t adjust to the conditions. Even right to the end there were some mistakes being made that were about not adjusting to the conditions. But we’ve got a lot of young guys playing and a lot of guys who haven’t played much footy so that’s to be expected against a really experienced group. Our guys will learn a lot.

Q: We’ve been talking all year about how many young players you have and if Subiaco’s great strength is anything, it’s their experience and big bodies which stands out in those conditions?
A: They were certainly probably harder and cleaner around the ball. We sort fumbled and handballed, and went to ground a lot. There were some really good learnings for a lot of our guys but we were a long way below our best. I didn’t think they would say they were at their best either, but they were much better than us.

Q: Because you haven’t lost in a long time and you haven’t played a game at all this year where you’ve been outplayed, do you take a lot of teaching aspects from a game like this?
A: We review every game and it doesn’t matter if we win or lose, we still review it exactly the same. There’ll obviously be more opportunities to learn I would think from a game like this, but if someone had said we’d be 8-2 at the mid-point of the year with a lot of youth and senior guys having missed a bit of footy, we would certainly have taken it. We’ve set ourselves up really well and we weren’t good enough in this game, but we’ll bounce back and get to work Monday, review the game and start preparing for next week.

Q: You never want to lose Brock Higgins especially when he’s healthy, but Zac Strom couldn’t have possibly done more in his absence?
A: The great thing about Zac is that he gives you his all every time he plays and this game was no exception. We would have loved to have had Brock available and be able to leave Zac forward, but that was our availability. It was really wet and we probably would have almost gone with a smaller team anyway but that was forced on us. We did get beaten around the ball which gave them some really good opportunities and we made some simple errors which gave them scoring opportunities. They were much better than us and deserved their win.

Q: You’ve been copping a lot of injuries lately and those conditions tend to be conducive to injuries, have you got through unscathed?
A: That sort of game is always a bit more crash and bang with the contests so the guys will be a bit sore and a bit heavy given how wet it was. But I think they will recover and from all reports at this stage we should have everyone available next week.

Q: That should mean you are pretty much full strength at the moment aside from Shaun Bewick?
A: Adam McIntosh got another game back in the twos so he’s ready and that’s great for us, Collard is back training and Vandeleur shouldn’t be too far away either. Hopefully in the next two or three weeks Blaine Johnson will be in a position to be pushing for selection too. There’s certainly some boys to come back but I don’t think too many will be available for next week, but that’s OK. We’ll put 22 out there and they’ll play their role. We certainly didn’t have an even contribution this week and we rely on that to play well.

Q: Thoughts on playing the Eagles next week, are they much different to prepare for?
A: It’s probably more about preparing your own group that’s the focus because you don’t know who  you will be coming up against. With the way they play, you can prepare for that but in terms of who is actually going to play, it’s really hard. We’ll concentrate on ourselves and how we want to play. We’ll watch how we think they want to play as a team and then you find out the personnel later that you will come up against.