Coach Post Match – Todd Curley Round 20

WHAT South Fremantle coach Todd Curley had to say following the Round 20 WAFL victory over Perth at Fremantle Community Bank Oval that locked away second position and a home qualifying final with one game of the 2018 season remaining.

QUESTION: That was a pretty comprehensive performance, you wouldn’t have found much not to like?
ANSWER: We didn’t like big Higgo getting knocked out but aside from that I thought we were pretty consistent. It was probably our most complete performance for a while so we were really happy.

Q: What do you know about Higgins at this stage?
A: I think he just has a laceration to his lip, or inside his lip, and I don’t think he passed the concussion test anyway. He should be alright. Structurally and everything I think his face is OK, it's more a flesh would albeit a significant one.

Q: It didn’t seem to affect you too bad and you were still able to dominate through the middle even without him?
A: Perth plays probably a bit of a different game to most and they tend to just get back and then look for that slingshot. It's got us in the past but I thought we handled it much better this time. I thought we were pretty even across the board and I thought we defended really well. Not only did we get it to our end, I thought we defended in our front half really well and didn’t allow them to get their game going. That was really pleasing and obviously we were a man down but kept pushing right to the end which was pleasing as well.

Q: Your back-line again was outstanding led by two virtual first-year players in Chad Pearson and Noah Strom?
A: Certainly we are really happy with where they are going. They are pretty young down there but Steve Verrier went back as well and was really good and so was Blayne Wilson and Jason Maskos. The three young boys were really good but it certainly helps you defend better if you defend well with your forwards and mids. We're a team where we need to play well as a team both on attack and defence to play well.

Q: Nice for Chad and Noah to get forward too to kick the first goals of their league career?
A: Kyle Russell did as well so we had three young blokes kick their first goal and that's great. But the way we played was probably the most pleasing thing.

Q: Jason Maskos just keeps doing a job on the opposition's best small or mid-size forward and has to be in the discussion as the best small defender in the league?
A: His second half of the year has certainly been good. He was injured early and missed a fair bit of footy but he has certainly been building the last few weeks. We hold him in really high esteem and he's one of our leaders. Defensively and one-on-one he's really good, and he's starting to use the ball and get up the ground more too.

Q: Impressive performance from Mason Shaw to mark strongly and kick seven goals after a quiet few weeks?
A: The weather hasn’t been the best the past four or five weeks which makes it a bit harder for a key position player, but I thought the way we used the ball helped and he presented really well, took some great marks and kicked well. But I thought the way we moved the ball certainly helped that that. He was great and stood up, took contested marks and kicked straight. It was pleasing and I'm sure he was happy the sun was up when he got out of bed this morning.

Q: Your experienced midfielders again were tremendous including Nick Suban and Ryan Cook who started the year at half-back and half-forward respectively but are now spending more time in the middle?
A: I guess it's been a build hasn’t it and there's no use playing your absolute best footy early in the year because it doesn’t mean much. We've probably made a really conscious decision to keep things a bit fresher heading into the back half of the year and we've been able to do that. We've still been able to have eight debutants and most weeks we've had seven or eight players who have played 25 games or less while trying to manage our guys and making sure they are ready to go towards the back half of the year. We are pretty happy that most of that has worked out to this point.

Q: The last three weeks has seen you play some of your best footy of the year and it's the perfect time to be doing it?
A: We've qualified and that's the main aim, and then in two weeks it's a whole new tournament and what you've done before doesn’t really matter that much other than there will be three teams that have earned a double chance. But it's a new ball game. We obviously have a game to go next week and still have a lot of improvement in us we think, but we're pretty keen to get moving and get into September.

Q: Ben Saunders hurt his knee early in the reserves and it didn't look good. What do you know about it?
A: He hurt himself early in the ressies game and has hurt his knee, but until we get it scanned and get those results we won't know. He was getting really close to getting back in and being ready to go. Fingers crossed it's not too bad. We have no idea about his chances of getting back until we know exactly what the problem is. To be honest, we were really conservative and we had planned to get him ready to be back at his best as conservatively as he could. That plan obviously might need to change but it doesn’t change the fact that if he can get fit and be available he's in our best side.

Q: Are you confident your forward-line can still get the job done even if Saunders doesn't make it back?
A: We had 11 goal kickers out there and Zac Strom has been playing pretty well, Dylan Main spent time forward this week and with Parker, Dell and a few others who can go through there we have some options. We'd like to have him available but we just have to wait and see.

Q: What do you now hope to see on Saturday against East Fremantle?
A: We've been pretty good since the bye and have been playing our way with some really good signs so we want to continue to see us play our brand of footy. Nothing will change there.