Are you happy with the contract that has been tabled to you by the club?
I'm rapt. Rapt to have the opportunity to continue to build this group. It's all extremely fair, as you would expect; the club's always been great to deal with. So really it's a matter of nutting out little bits and pieces and just making sure both myself and the club are absolutely clear on what we're aiming for and how we're going to measure it. Doing all that, that's basically it. It's just a matter of me getting clear and getting back to the club now and then talking through it with them. That often takes a few days – there'll be a weekend in between. There is urgency, but there's no rush to force the issue.

Can you reveal the length of the offer?
No, because we've got to go through all of that.

But you're confident you'll take the club up on its offer?
Yeah, I'm very comfortable. If it was one year or five years, I'd be comfortable, providing I felt as though the understanding of what we're aiming to achieve in the period of the contract is clear on both parties.

The season so far; how have you assessed the first 11 rounds for your side?
Very interesting, some really exciting parts, a couple of really disappointing games – probably three really disappointing games. But the good part is other than the St Kilda game we haven't really been blown away. We've fought on pretty strongly, even in games where we've been really disappointing. So overall I'd say just disappointed we haven't won one more game, possibly two, for the number of games we've been thereabouts. But that's an indication of where we are at and what we've got to improve on.

What's pleased you the most so far this season? Any particular player, or a game where things clicked?
Probably various things. Most of our improvement we're looking at is in the way we're moving the ball, and that's an area still for massive improvement. The pressure we've managed to put the opposition under, I think that's been improved out of sight from last year. But the other big side of it is seeing the development of some of the young players, which is just a time thing, getting games into them. We're managing to do that this year.

The skills of the side: how have they been addressed this season?
Just ongoing work, training, keep putting the players in pressure situations and getting them to work on their skills. The other side of it is decision making. Taking the easy option means less chance of a skill error. So it's all about, again, just experience for the younger players and the senior players getting an understanding of how those players play around them.

The big losses of 2008: was getting rid of those types of losses the first thing you needed to address coming into this season?
It was certainly one of the key focuses for what the board expected. Obviously we don't focus on not having big losses, we want to win every game, but one of the areas the board wanted to see improvement in was that we weren't going to get blown off the park with massive margins. So we have improved in that area.

Looking back at those games, the two Geelong losses and Collingwood in particular, has there been a response from the players in any way?
I think so, yeah. Just in the attitude of the players in the pre-season and in the season so far, they're working very hard to improve on the areas that we want to improve on. Our biggest improvement will come as the experience of the group grows. In terms of kicking, you can make minute improvements over a year or two, but they'll just improve as they get more mature. They'll get stronger, make better decisions, understand the pace of the game a lot better and therefore look like they're better players and better kicks.

Your comments after those big losses, and again after the Richmond loss this season, were very positive. Is there a motive in that, are you looking to maintain something?
Yeah, morale and belief. You know, we have a vision that we're working to and people can criticise us for having that, but we're strong and focused on that. With the player group, they certainly understand where they've let themselves down post-game, they understand where they've got to improve, they understand areas they have to keep working on. Press conferences don't go for two hours, so you don't get the chance to go through that, and I probably wouldn't publicly say everything we want the players to work on. So I understand that there would be some criticism on the way you might address losses, but that's just nit picking. That's just people wanting to target easy targets. I think we address all the areas that we need to address pretty strongly.

The younger players: how have you assessed their progress as a group?
Pretty good. We've got a lot of them in at once, and that sometimes makes things harder because then the team struggles more and there are more turnovers, they run hard and get caught out of position. But they're coming along really well, I'm really pleased. Some of the kids in their first handful of games, Adam Cockie was really good, (Tom) Swift's been really good. (Nick) Naitanui has obviously only played one game, but we're excited about what he's going to bring to the club. And then we had eight kids that made their debuts last year on top of the three this year, so 11 pretty much brand new faces alongside guys like (Ben) McKinley, (Jamie) McNamara and a few others that made their debuts the year before.

Can you sum up the selection philosophy for the rest of the year and how those young guys are going to fit into it?
Yeah, the selection philosophy will be pick a side that is going to hopefully win some games, hopefully play to the best of its ability, but continue to aim to get experience into a lot of young players. That doesn’t necessarily mean its always at AFL level, it could be in the WAFL – that may be their best learning area. But we'll make those calls as a match committee and if we believe that a player is going to get the most out of playing in the AFL and their form warrants it, then they'll stay in the side.

When you hand these jobs out, like Scott Selwood on Ben Cousins, or Brad Ebert on Jimmy Bartel, how much are you seeing them take away from that?
They take a lot away from that – it's a great learning curve. To be on the best players, we can talk about it and we can show them vision of how they play, but to actually be out there and run with them shows them where they sit on the competition. They probably feel like they're super fit young men and going really well. They run with those guys, who are five or six years older or 10 years older in Cousins' case and they realise how much improvement they've got in them.

Is that a tactic that will continue through the rest of this season?
Possibly; not really sure. There's going to be times when Brad Ebert will match up on a really top AFL player, but the facts are that when you've got maybe eight players that have got less than 20 games experience someone's going to be playing on someone who's got more experience. It may not be the match up we want, but it's going to happen.

Luke Shuey's one of the forgotten younger guys – probably not around the club – but is his introduction to the AFL one of the tougher things you've seen at the footy club?
Certainly. It's been very tough. But he's a quality young man and he's certainly got a clear vision of what he wants to get out of his footy career. We're just rapt to have him around the place.

The fans haven't had the chance to make an assessment, but what have you seen that you can share?
Exciting, great attitude, going to be a good player. He hasn't disappointed us with anything that he's shown us so far.

The game plan. How do you think your players are coping with it?
Pretty good. A lot of it is fairly new for them, and there's been a fair bit of confusion at times. But that is expected when you're throwing that up at them. But they've embraced it and they're working really hard at it. They're going to improve at that no doubt throughout the rest of the year.

I'm sure you'll give nothing away here, but can you describe any part of it?
Nope. Just put down that most people say we're reactive in the coach's box and only have one game plan and we play man on man football. We'll just go with that. When we won our premiership in 2006 and made the grand final in 2005 we had the ball inside our forward 50 more than the opposition. That's where the game's won and lost. You've got to be able to get the ball forward to create scoring opportunities. There's not too much difference between teams once it's inside their forward 50; it's more how often it's up there. There are a lot of strategies to try and do that and one of them is to be a very good clearance and stoppage side. We're very good at stoppages, but we can get better at getting more out of winning the ball at stoppages, and that's going to make a big difference to how we play. Making less skill errors through the middle of the ground is going to mean we can get the ball to go from the back end to the forward line more often, rather than turning it over. 

Has the game plan changed much from those grand final years of 2005 and 2006?
A little bit, yeah. We have a difference focus and part of that is different personnel, therefore having to look at how we go about it.

And with a young side that isn't expected to challenge probably for at least another couple of years, do you need to look that far ahead and plan your game plan around that point?
You try to, yeah. And some of the things we're putting in place will take a couple of years to get right and we'll change them as we go and we'll keep tinkering with it. I expect it would be a fair bit different to what we're aiming at now in two or three years time, but that's just the way of the game.

Do you think game plans across the League will change a lot on that time?
There'll be some changes, but not massive, no.

The list – the way the side's coming together – do you see any holes in the structure at the moment?
Not massive holes, but there's certainly areas we'd like to be stronger in. Some of those areas will be with young players that are currently on the list, others we might need in this year's draft or through trading in the next couple of years. But we're certainly aware of some areas we want to strengthen.

In terms of movement within the side, in what position do you think Mark LeCras is going to end up playing his footy for West Coast?
I don't know. He could end up playing as a midfielder – I think he's good enough to do that. But if some of our other young midfielders develop as they look like they're going to, he might be of more value as a permanent forward. That's something we’ll assess ongoing and who knows, we might unearth a couple of young, small goal sneaks over the next few years allowing him more time in the midfield.

Help for Daniel Kerr – did you expect some of the heat might come off him this season?
Not really, because most of the opposition just target him, well, all of the opposition. They see Daniel as the player to stop from our club. That's something he has to deal with. A lot of young players have had to deal with that in their careers, especially when they're at young clubs, but he'll come through that pretty strongly and in a couple of year's time he'll be playing a very valuable role for us and hopefully still getting tagged, meaning some of our young kids will be dominating. Maybe they'll get the tag and he'll be able to run free. We're pretty happy with the way Daniel's going. We think he could still play a bit better, but we understand the attention that he's getting and we'll use him in a role this year that will open up opportunities for young players in our midfield.

Sam Butler seemed poised to take some of that heat. Where's he at with his footy?
He's really just getting back to consistent playing time. We rate him very highly and we tried to get him in and going earlier this year and he probably hadn't really hit his straps at that stage. You can get found out at AFL level, so he's working back to his full playing potential and I think he'll be a good AFL player.

And for the rest of this season, how will you measure the success of the last 11 rounds?
We’ll measure it on our performances, basically. How the team performs week in, week out, and that will be partly on wins and losses and partly on how we play. There's no actual numbers on it, but it's something we'll be measuring very closely.

How do you think you're positioned?
We've got a pretty exciting young group and the thing is the time factor. No-one knows how long it is until players mature, but we know our team is going to improve form now through the next 10 years, I think. If we can improve enough in the next three to four years we could be right up around the mark.