Simpson's case for improvement
West Coast coach Adam Simpson goes head-to-head with chief football writer Mark Duffield to talk about the AFL season ahead.
Tell us why you will be better?
There are probably a couple of things that we are doing differently now. Last year we trained to learn. We were going through a learning phase of how a drill looks and how I see the game – the philosophies of our fundamentals and how we went about it. All of that sort of stuff we did right up until the last training day before the NAB Cup so we start with that base pre-season and it becomes more about driving the standards. We have got to continue to work on the fundamentals but we seem to be in a better space of understanding. The quicker we can make things instinctive and they don’t have to think about where to run or how to defend or what our forward structure is. We have got a lot of our list and particularly the senior players instinctively go to those positions now and work things out the way we see it. I don’t know what that means in terms of making us better but it has got to make their minds clearer. Even our coaches are less about what does the coach want and more about this is what we want as a club so they can coach in a way that is more their own. The coaching group is more in tune with where we want to go. We are training to improve now and we are driving a higher standard.
You said according to how you see the game. How do you see the game? What do you need to be successful?
I think most clubs now train basic fundamentals. My own personal philosophy is that if you try and train a style or technique or you try and re-invent the game then the game can go in a different direction and it doesn’t work. The foundation of our game is built around the fundamentals which sounds basic but it is not just kicks marks handballs, it is stuff like ruckman-midfielder connection – how does Nic Naitanui connect to Luke Shuey – that is a fundamental. The fundamentals are quite broad. Your body positioning as a defender, how you crumb a ball. You assume when kids get drafted that they will know that but they don’t. We are in a system that drafts 18-year-olds who have never cooked a meal in their lives so to assume they know technicalities of AFL is naïve. It doesn’t bulletproof you because the game does go in all sorts of directions but if we get the foundation right we cater for where we want to take the team and how we want to move the ball and how we want team defence to look and how we want stoppages to look. If we get those fundamentals right and then look at tactics of the game we can work on that.
What part of your game let you down last year?
I think our ability to stand up in the contest was inconsistent. Against sides above us and in particular the top six – the ability to be tougher for longer is a challenge that we have put on our players. Whether that is putting a bit of size on them or doing more competitive work at training and getting them in that space where they understand that it is a brutal part of our game that you have got to be good at to play finals and win finals. Turn them into men – some of them.
Two players in particular look bigger – Josh Kennedy and Scott Selwood. What is the thinking there?
Josh wasn’t a player that we identified needs to put on massive size. It doesn’t take him a lot to lose or gain weight and he is just exploring what he can do with his body. He has been training well. He has put on a little bit of size but it hasn’t been a massive focus to get Josh as a man mountain and lose his agility and his ability to run and compete. We will see how he performs over the next few weeks. Once you are over 25 or 26 you are not really going to get much gain out of saying to them put on four or five kilos. I think they manage themselves with the fitness staff. It is more players like Brad Sheppard – have a look at his body size and Bennell and Dom Sheed, Chris Masten, Andrew Gaff. These are the guys you think can they carry a bit of extra size and what do they do with that size. You don’t want to take away their strengths. We are not overplaying the size and strength thing. I think a lot of it was catch up and not that we are getting bigger and stronger than everyone else in the competition.
A common comment on your midfield – that they are small by modern standards. Is this right or is that view overblown?
I think it is overblown. I don’t see the size as in height, as an issue with midfielders. I wouldn’t even bother comparing. You look at Fremantle which over here is the obvious thing that people do and they are a tall midfield. You look at Sydney, Kieren Jack isn’t that big, Hannebery isn’t that big, McVeigh. After Josh Kennedy who is big? Height doesn’t worry me, Can they find the ball, are they aggressive and can they use the ball well? That takes precedence over how tall they are.
Did the way you kick the ball to your forwards, particularly against he better defensive mechanisms in the competition hurt you?
It is the hardest kick in footy – the last one into your forward line and the combination of the right system and getting the ball in the hands of the right people. We are continuing to work on that. Ball movement is something we have been looking at since I got here – getting back to the fundamentals of connecting with forwards. But also now that we have introduced a bit of a new system with our forward line and how we moved the ball and it took us a little while to work that out. In the back half of the year we had significant improvement, albeit not against the top four sides so we will see how that progresses but it is a combination of the right type of ball movement and getting the ball in the right hands.
Sharrod Wellingham looks fit and in good touch. Are you confident about getting better footy from him after a disappointing two years?
I think he had a good look at it last year. He moved well and trained well and had a good pre-season. For him it is about getting yourself prepared in that sense but also about what he does off the ball and how he goes about that is what we have been looking at pre-season and I have been really pleased with his attitude towards getting better with his off the ball stuff. Really pleased. I think he has got the respect of his playing group in terms of how he has gone about it and how hard he has worked on it. But I still want him to play to his strengths so getting him available, getting him the ball 15 or 20 times, using it well and kicking goals – all that sort of stuff - that is him playing to his strengths. What he does off the ball for him is critical to his longevity in the AFL.
The club appears to have a big group of players that need to find the next level: You mentioned Sheppard but also Gaff, Schofield, Wellingham, even Luke Shuey who had a pretty good year last year. Do you acknowledge that there is a big group of them that need to improve?
Yeah but every club is the same. It is not your leaders because they are leaders because they are consistent and reliable performers. Who has improved individually? I look at Bennell, Sheppard, Lycett, Hutchings, Yeo, Gaff, Masten. Shuey I think has always been a high end player. Brown. They are all better players than they were this time last year. Whether that is just because they have got 25 more games of experience – I have got more confidence in that group that they understand where they are at. They have developed in a way where I think they know that if they play well we win – not if Priddis plays well we win because he plays well every week. Not if JK kicks 10. I saw it at Hawthorn too with Stratton, Isaac Smith, Birchall, Puopolo and Breust. I have identified to that group that if we can get them to understand their importance to the side and they play consistent football I think we will have genuine success.
How far further advanced is Nic Naitanui than he was this time last year?
It is such an unknown. This time last year I was at pains to say to everyone that I hadn’t even seen him train and from what I gather that had happened every year for five years. He had managed to play well in one or two of those years with no pre-season but I knew where he was at this time last year – he hadn’t done anything. Now he has had his best bloc of pre-season. I don’t think that guarantees you that he dominates. But it gives him the best opportunity. I don’t want to oversell that he has had a good crack at pre-season so he is going to dominate the league. He is still learning a lot. But he has put himself in a good position physically. We have managed him in the right way and we are expecting him to have a consistent year.
Does the debate about him and his profile over here fascinate or frustrate you?
It did early. I am okay with it now. I was frustrated with it a little bit last year because I knew he was just coming from so far back. For a guy who was still learning my new system and to adapt to me and how I wanted to see the game played and he had done 100 minutes of training. I didn’t think he was terrible but there were games where he had six touches and people were saying we should drop him. He divides people’s opinions. I got over that pretty quick.
He is a high impact low possession player, can he round out his game to be a 16 or 17 possession ruckman and pick up a few uncontested possessions as well?
We have tried to work on that in the pre-season on how to connect through the midfield and get the ball around the ground. The reason you get frustrated with people who judge Nic is that if you just look at his stats well of course it isn’t going to paint a pretty picture. But if you look at his impact on the game. I don’t know what he had in the Adelaide game possession wise (5 kicks, 11 handballs, 27 hit-outs, five tackles) but he was one of our best players because he had impact around the ball. It was either stripping it, or hit outs to advantage or tackling. We are just really happy that he is in our side. I am not going to judge him on possessions, albeit I think we would all like him with the ball a little bit more and maybe have impact forward at stages.
Will we see any of your kids this year?
They will play this week – the ones we have got available. We have got a couple of kids who aren’t available. Duggan rolled his ankle last week and so is going to miss a week. Corey Adamson has been recovering from a hamstring. Damien Cavka. But I have seen enough to think that the guys we drafted this year will play AFL. That is what you want. We will give them opportunity this week and if they progress well they will play NAB Cup. The big thing this year about selection of our team is that last year we managed a few situations and I still wanted to know what a lot of the guys had – Wilson, Carter, Jacob Brennan, Smith, all of those guys - they were in the same boat as Bennell, Sheppard, Lycett etc. Now that we are a bit more settled with our list we have got to pick best side.
Do you feel pressure to make finals this year?
No I don’t. I want to play finals footy. Our club wants to play finals footy. I wanted to do that last year. The pressure and expectation at this club from what I have learned is here every year whether we are last or first. I have said from the first day that I like that. I like expectation. Living up to it and dealing with the stresses of that I think is part of the job. I don’t know how to not live in that space.
