Coach Post Match – Todd Curley Second Semi-Final

WHAT South Fremantle coach Todd Curley had to say following the WAFL second semi-final defeat at the hands of Subiaco and now looking ahead to Sunday's preliminary final against Claremont at Fremantle Community Bank Oval.

QUESTION: As you found out, Subiaco only needs to dominate for a short period to blow you away?
ANSWER: I thought they were only better than us really for one quarter to be honest. But they were probably better than us and a lot harder than us for most of the game. We never really got going and then a bit of ill-discipline and frustration bubbled over and they make you pay. But you earn a second chance and we'll have a look at it, work out the bits we need to get better in and train for it during the week.

Q: What did you make of the first half, neither team played that well and couldn’t put a score on board. Were you reasonably happy at half-time?
A: I think if you look at it at half-time it was four goals each and it was a bit of an arm-wrestle. Even halfway through the third quarter there was still only a goal the difference, and we had a lot of guys who were down. We thought there was a lot more growth left in us but we just lost our way and our focus a bit, and they hurt us on the scoreboard pretty quickly.

Q: They kicked six goals in 12 minutes but outside of that you pretty much outscored them. What do you focus on when you look back on the game?
A: Even in other periods of the game, I don’t think we ever really got going and played our footy. We hung in there while we were playing not at our best, and hung in there for a fair while, but at the end of the day you lose the game. We'll go through it and there'll be a few things that hopefully standout that we can look at. But it's hard to tell until we do the review and we'll do that, and then we'll get ready for next week.

Q: You were at ground level for a lot of the game and the skills of both teams seemed to be down, what did you think that was because of?
A: I've got no idea really. It's a final so of course there's going to be pressure and whether it was the first warm day we've had for a while and the ground was pretty hard, I don’t know if that had any impact. It's hard to know but I'll have a look and get back to you.

Q: Seaton Thompson looked to hurt his hamstring early, how much did that hurt?
A: He hurt himself halfway through the first quarter but it's hard to know what impact it hard. But generally when you lose one pretty early, your percentages of winning those games goes highly in the other teams' favour especially when it's pretty warm. But it certainly didn’t cost us the game. He was just tight in the hammy and they said if we put him back out it would be a risk.

Q: Claremont now in the preliminary final, what are your thoughts on them?
A: We'll have a look at what they did to beat West Coast to get through so we'll review their game, and review our game. But we've played them twice in the last four weeks so I can't imagine there'll be anything too different. It's two pretty good teams so it should be a good game.

Q: A fourth straight preliminary final you'll now play in, how strong is the desire to go that one step further?
A: I think you always want to go as far as you can so there's no doubt that the boys will want to win. That doesn't give you the right to get the victory though, you have to earn it. It will be another tough opponent and another tough game but we'll turn up, do our best like we've done most weeks and generally when we play at our best the scoreboard takes care of itself.

Q: Is Adam McIntosh any chance of making a fairytale comeback when it looked like his season, and potentially career, was over?
A: He's certainly back training so he is available. There's not many fairytales in footy but he has been a great person around our footy club so he'll keep training and put his hand. Then we'll pick the best team that we think is best equipped to beat Claremont next week. If he's in that, it would be a great story.

Q: The fact that you've lost three preliminary finals in-a-row now heading into this Sunday, how do you approach that history as you prepare for the game?
A: I don’t think you hide away from it so the fact is with we've been in the last three. Not all of our group have, though, so it's a balancing act. Some guys will have that burning desire to make up for whether they've played in one of those, two of them or all of them. Then there will be other guys who haven’t played in any of them. We would have liked to have won at least one of them, but that doesn’t actually have a direct impact on this year. It will come up but it doesn’t have an impact on this year. To different individuals it means different things so we just want them to focus on doing what they need to play at their best.

Q: How different do you feel the team is placed than 12 months ago?
A: The team is a bit more flexible and it's changed a fair bit, and we're a bit younger. We feel like we are well placed and we've earned the right to have a second chance, and we get to play at home so we are happy to take that chance. You get to this stage of the year and the best team on the day will win the game so that's for us to practice and train for this week so we are at our best on Sunday.