Coach Post Match – Todd Curley Round 3

WHAT South Fremantle coach Todd Curley had to say following the Bulldogs third straight victory to open the WAFL season last Friday night at Fremantle Community Bank Oval against East Perth.

QUESTION: Against a team desperate to win who has been a contender for a few years now, you must be happy to come away with a 40-point win?
ANSWER: I'm probably more happy with how we performed. It was perhaps a touch tardy at the start but I thought we really worked into it and our pressure lifted. When our pressure is at its best we can be a reasonable team.

Q: It's not often that a player kicks five goals in about 10 minutes but that's what Ben Saunders did in the first quarter. That really set up the night?
A: He doesn’t need too much space or too much opportunity. I thought our pressure up the ground caused some turnovers and then we were able to get it into it him quickly one-on-one. And one-on-one he is pretty hard to beat.

Q: They had some pretty experienced defenders back there especially Kyle Anderson, but by getting the ball into Saunders quickly it forced them into some mistakes?
A: I don’t know if they were panicked but it's pretty hard playing as a defender, especially when you can get caught out at times with quick ball movement or on a turnover. Forwards generally these days don’t have a lot of space but on turnovers sometimes they do. It was pretty hard work for them when it was coming in pretty quick especially in the second half of that first quarter.

Q: You must have been impressed to respond when they challenged in the second half to end up kicking the last four goals?
A: We knew they were going to come out pretty hard. They didn’t have a great start in Round 1 but they were pretty good last week against the best team in the competition. They had a few guys out there in the midfield who have played a fair bit of AFL footy and their rucks were pretty strong so it was a good challenge for us. And they certainly challenged us a few times but it was pleasing we were able to steady and then kick away.

Q: Haiden Schloithe was probably the best player on the ground across half-forward both with what he did with the ball and the pressure he put on?
A: He is one of our leaders and is in our leadership group but I thought he was a super leader for us this week. He really instigated early with his pressure and chasing, and harassing across half-forward. He kicked a pretty good goal early and set the tone for us and got us going. He delivered a really consistent performance and I'm pleased for him.

Q: You have been looking for a small forward and Steven Edwards looks to have answered that call?
A: I thought all our forwards were pretty good. Our forward pressure has probably been a fair highlight for us and Stevey is pretty dynamic. He has real leg speed and he hurries up the opposition a bit with the ball. He got to some really good spots front and square. With Mason Shaw, Saundo, Strom and Branchi there we just want them to give a good contest that allows Blaine Johnson, Steve Edwards, Schloithey and whoever else rotates through that forward zone to go to work. 

Q: With a bye now to come, how would you reflect on the start to the season?
A: It's always a bit of an unknown the start of the season. You are not sure where you are at and you aren’t sure where everyone else is at. It probably takes until about the middle of the season until you work out which teams are going alright and which aren’t. There's no doubt we are pleased to be 3-0 and we'd much rather be 3-0 than 0-3. It's a great time for us to have a bye. We have a few things we have identified that we want to get better at and post-game the playing group said they wanted to use our next four sessions to get better before we play again. It's great that they are driving themselves.

Q: The only player sidelined who will be back this year is Brock Higgins. Would you expect him to play in some form against Perth in Round 5?
A: He was pretty close to playing some minutes this weekend. He has been back training and running so he will definitely play the next game at twos level. It will be good to have him back out there. Chris Luff, who travelled overseas, is back and training as well so he's probably two or three weeks away. But touchwood we have escaped any injuries again so our list is pretty healthy at the moment, which is really good.

Q: Speaking of Perth, do you expect much to be made of coming up against Clint Jones for the first time since he decided to join them and not return to South Fremantle?
A: I wouldn’t have thought so. There's not too many guys who played with him. And he is free to make whatever decision he thinks is best for him and his family, and his decision was to play at Perth. It will be a big challenge for us after they played pretty well against us in a practice match and won this week. For us we focus on training and preparing to play Perth next week.