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WAFL finals: Bill Monaghan says West Perth defence key against South Fremantle

Bill MonaghanJoondalup Times

DEFENCE will be key against South Fremantle in the qualifying final at Fremantle Oval on Saturday.

They have a lot of players who work into space and can hurt you by foot.

But our ball movement has really improved this season so the Bulldogs will need to be just as wary of us going back the other way.

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It will be a game between two evenly matched sides.

Michael Lourey, Jay van Berlo and Mark Hamilton will come into the team after missing our last match.

As is always the case at finals time, it leaves me with the hardest part of the job in having to omit players at the most important stage of the season.

We’ve got some new guys in the system who will be playing their first final.

But they’re fortunate to have wisdom around them from a big group of finals-experienced players as well as a few from the premiership side of 2013.

The players were buoyed this week by an inspirational speech from premiership midfielder Matt Guadagnin, who announced his retirement.

He is one of the best players I’ve coached.

People will probably look at his career and think there was nothing fancy about him, but he was just one of those players you wanted to play in your team.

That’s the reason we gave him as much as opportunity as possible to get his career back up and running after he had a knee reconstruction in 2015 and then a bad run of hamstring injuries after that.

We knew what he could bring to the table, not just from a playing point of view, but in terms of leadership and direction as well.

I’m really proud to have been associated with him.

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