Watch a clear and present Danger
DAMO: G’day Bill, guessing you saw Gaz Sr added to his career goals tally this week. Reckon you were robbed of a few in the day? BILLY: Exactly, they should go through my tapes, especially that ’89 Grand Final when I tripped over in the goal square. That’s a goal. Pity it wasn’t the ’89 Grand Final they found that extra goal for Gaz, it would have been a draw. DAMO: How do you reckon Chris Scott’s boys look for this season mate?
BILLY: Some people think the Cats are going to slide but after watching a few training sessions this year, I’ve been very impressed with the intensity. Obviously since they had another chat about bowing out of the finals badly, there’s been a different feel about training and a lot more intensity. DAMO: Who caught your eye over summer? BILLY: I reckon Patty Dangerfield, who has certainly been a bit sore over pre-season the past couple of years. He’s trained freely and looked really, really good, and I reckon also Luke
Dahlhaus will be a great pickup. DAMO:Where do you want to see Danger start against the Pies? Up forward or at the centre bounce?
BILLY: I’d like to see him on the ball because Gazza will be up forward. Looking for improvement, you know what you’re going to get out of Joel and Danger, but I reckon the improvement will come from blokes like (Brandan) Parfitt, (Jack) Henry, (Sam) Menegola, Cam Guthrie, (Esava) Ratugolea and I reckon Charlie Constable might get a game early. DAMO: How about the Pies? They were a different beast in finals last year. BILLY: They’re in a good situation because they’re a very good side, but somehow they’ve got to bring in Darcy Moore, Jamie Elliott, Jordan Roughhead and Dayne Beams, so I don’t know who goes out. But there just seemed to be a buy-in or a connection last year with the coaches and the players. DAMO: The two question marks for mine are, who
goes to Mason Cox and how can Stanley influence the ruck battle? BILLY: Who are the Pies’ talls, Mihocek and Cox? Harry Taylor and Blicavs can work that out. Stanley against Grundy is a big one. He just has to break even, he doesn’t have to be best-on-ground, big Rhysy boy. All we want to see is a good competitive effort and break even and that will certainly help the Pussycats. DAMO: And at the other end, what are you expecting from Gaz this season?
BILLY: I’ll tell you what, whenever he gets it, it’s either a goal or it lands in the hands of a teammate. That’s what you love about him. But he might get caught in the centre a couple of times because he’ll be standing there and they’ll go, ‘Gaz, you’re not playing here mate, you’re in the forward line’. He might give away a few free kicks doing that!