West Perth looking for Falcons’ spirit in 2023

LIVING out the club’s four core values of spirit, selfless, trust and resilience is the main focus for West Perth heading into the 2023 WAFL Women’s season. West Perth Head of WAFLW Development Luke Richardson says the Falcons are not shying away from the fact they were in it to win games, but by following the four core values, the results will take carer of themselves.

“We’re very bold in that we want to win games of football this year,” Richardson said. “We’re not going to put a number on the amount of games we want to win, we’d obviously like to win all of them, and then do an East Freo and be 14-0 at the end. Realistically for us the metrics are around competitiveness.”

Spirit, in particular, has become a focus for the Falcons who went through their inaugural League season winless, but showed signs of improvement in the second half of the year after building connections and confidence.

“We’re always going to play to win,” Richardson said. “But we always want to make sure when we walk over the white line into the changerooms, that our supporter base, our playing group, our coaching group all leave the ground going ‘far our we had a crack today, we did everything we possibly could, we flew the West Perth flag as high as we could, we didn’t get the result we wanted, but we did everything we could today. We left it all out on the park’.

“Talking about spirit, we’ll make sure as a club our obligation to the competition is to make sure that we provide that product and that means being competitive for four quarters.”

Richardson said 2022 was a “tough” year for the club, but countered the negatives with positives given the Falcons were able to come away with “opportunities for learning”. He said being a young group with limited experience, the team lacked the mental and physical toughness that sides such as East Fremantle and Claremont had. However, that did change towards the second half of the season.

“You go into a competition that has come a long way and that gap is too great so first half of the season it was just about everyone coming to terms with the situation,” Richardson said. “But what we saw was a really positive shift in our attitude, our mindset, our mentality, that every time we crossed that white line it’s an opportunity to take stock, it’s an opportunity to take a breathe and another option to just compare ourselves in a positive manner with those who are doing it well.”

Richardson said watching the likes of the grand finalists allowed the Falcons to learn what it took to compete at the level, and the shift was noticeable on and off the field.

“We can look to them and learn, and our metrics at the start, we shifted our metrics and our measurables internally from the first half of the year to the second half of the year and we started to see that our uncontested and contested counts were slowly increasing, so we were getting our hands on the ball more often,” Richardson said.

“It meant that if we were increasing our contested possession count, not only were we getting our hands on the ball more, that we were actually maintaining possession for a bit longer. Our players were getting used to the pace of the game, we were getting the ball out wide, and we were taking a breath with the ball in our hands. Those small things we were really happy with.”

The backline in particular was an area of noticeable growth, given it was often “under siege”. Though times were tough early, Richardson believes it holds those players in good stead for the future when presented with similar situations.

“When you expose yourself to significant pressure over extended periods time, you build some resilience,” Richardson said. “You build up the capacity to get comfortable in those heated environments to start to make some good decisions.

“We look at it as a tough year, but we look at it as a year that’s going to build us, to lay a foundation, look at resilience in particular and make sure that we always look at those opportunity for learning and ways that we’ve grown.”

Richardson described the close loss to South Fremantle as the “turning point” in the Falcons season, having pushed the Bulldogs, and also Subiaco in the pouring wet.

“We knew as soon as that rain hit, with our youth with that enthusiasm and energy that we could crack in for as long as we could, we might see some scoring opportunities,” Richardson said. “To be the fair that game and then the game against South Freo here at Pentanet Stadium where we kicked three goals for the game or 3.4, and we only lost by 20-odd points to South Freo.

“That was ‘okay, we’re okay’, that was the turning point for us to go ‘okay physically we can match it, we can move the ball well enough to get through, we can hit the scoreboard with the list that we’ve got, let’s just persist and trust the process’.”

West Perth is coming off a big win over East Perth, before a heavy loss to South Fremantle in the two preseason trial games. Heading into Round 1 against East Perth, Richardson said the club wanted to develop some “good quality, high performance habits” that meant preparing the same way against a new club like East Perth, as they would against the reigning premiers Claremont.

Though there is the external expectation that the Falcons will win their first League game and go in as favourites for the first time in women’s club history, Richardson said it was about “sticking to the process, trusting the plan and doing your job” to ensure consistency.

“We can ensure irrelevant of our opposition, we are on task, we are on with our roles both on-field and off-field, results will take care of themselves no matter of the opposition,” Richardson said.

“There is a sense of optimism heading into Round 1, we can hide from that, we can’t lie from that, but we were in East Perth’s shoes not that long ago, we understand their position and where they’re at and as a club we respect that. We’re always going to respect our opposition no matter what and we’re going to do what we need to do to win.”

West Perth has recruited a host of ex-Falcons in Claremont premiership duo Brooke Hongell and Katherine Bennett – who have been named co-captains of the club for 2023 – as well as ex-West Coast talent and Katherine’s younger sister Emily Bennett, and AFLW experienced Bianca Webb.

“Katherine Bennett and Brooke Hongell who obviously haven’t been here for very long since their return were able to have such an incredible impact on our squad that they were both voted into co-captaincy positions in 2023 which says a lot about their character and their ability to connect, engage, align and not just those areas, but actually live and breathe our values of trust, resilience, selflessness and spirit,” Richardson said.

“(Webb is) someone through both knowledge of the game and ability to coach youth, particularly that midfield group has been valuable, and what she can bring to us will surely set us up for sustained success because she’s a quality individual with great tactical knowledge, great football ability as a player and we’re very privileged to have her around our club and aligning with our club.”

From a youth perspective, the Falcons have a trio of players in the State Academy in Liliana Grassenis, Kayla Van Den Heever and Megan Norbury. Richardson said they were exciting talents in their own right and tracking well, but the depth of the state program was at a point where it was competitive for spots.

Grassenis will play inside 50 in 2023 after being a defender last year, with Van Den Heever also set for a role there while rotating into her usual inside midfield spot. For bottom-age Norbury, it is more about releasing her confidence to take grass and drive the ball inside 50 with her slick skills.

West Perth also has no shortage of 2007-born talents set to develop over the coming years, with Leuca Krmpotic, Ella Feist, Jamarah Walley and Rogers Cup league best and fairest Mia Russo all names to keep an eye out for over the next few seasons.

With the first round just over a week away, Richardson said the club was excited to run out in the first Perth Derby for the WAFL Women’s.

“We look forward to Round 1 and starting up this long-term club-based rivalry that’s existed in the men’s space for so long,” he said. “We look forward to igniting that passion, both the West Perth and East Perth broader supporting bases and hope that they engage, come along and watch what will hopefully be an opportunity for our girls to sing the song for the very first time.”

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