Stephen confident the worst is now behind the Sharks

EAST Fremantle vice-captain Andrew Stephen isn’t hiding from the fact that the Sharks’ current seven-game losing run has built the frustration levels at the club, but he’s confident that a first win under caretaker coach Brad Dodd could come this Sunday against South Fremantle.

The Sharks only missed making the grand final in 2014 due to poor kicking on goal in a preliminary final loss to Subiaco and then started 2015 well winning five of their first seven games.

However, East Fremantle has now not won a game since losing its last seven with a change of coach in that time with Steve Malaxos parting ways with the club and Dodd taking over.

There was a disastrous record-breaking loss to Claremont back in Round 15 before a bye, but the Sharks came out vastly improved against Peel Thunder on Saturday despite the eventual 26-point loss.

Again it was poor kicking on goal that cost the Sharks a chance of stopping their losing run and seeing it extend to seven, and Stephen admits as a defender that it’s frustrating seeing goals missed up the other end but he did like the improved way East Fremantle played against Peel.

“Obviously we’ve had a pretty big history over the last few years of missing opportunities and the prelim final last year, and Foxtel Cup grand final immediately come to mind,” Stephen told 91.3 SportFM.

“It’s extremely frustrating especially from a defensive point of view when you work so hard to get the ball up the ground, but it is a team game and even some of the defenders have missed goals. It’s just really frustrating, but in that aspect at least we are having shots on goal. We might be able to get those shots from better positions, though, and we might be having shots from too far out.

“We just need to get into areas where the percentages increase significantly about 20 to 30 metres out and straight in front. We are working on a few things at training with our ball movement and what we do inside-50, and our structure has changed a bit over the last few weeks to help that as well.”

Stephen also now feels that the Sharks have done well to learn the defensive processes that Dodd has been trying implement since replacing Malaxos as coach, but now it’s time to focus on the attack starting this Sunday against South Fremantle in the final derby of 2015 at ATOM Stadium.

“It’s never great losing and especially seven in-a-row. Frustrating is one of the many words you could probably use to describe the situation at the moment, but we are just trying to put things in place where we can rectify the situation,” he said.

“We’ve been working pretty hard on the defensive side of our game and we really need to now focus on finishing off our good working the defensive part of the ground. We are continuing to work hard at training and over the last few weeks we have trained at a high standard, but now we need to mirror what we are doing at training on game day.”

Obviously losing seven straight matches and having a coaching changeover means that it hasn’t been a time that Stephen will look back on as a highlight of his career, but he is now confident the Sharks are over the worst of it and that things can start to return to the positive starting Sunday.

“Obviously it’s been a pretty difficult time for the footy club and also the playing group, so we’ve had to adjust from having Stav as coach to Doddy. He has quite a different perspective on his game plan so over the last two or three weeks we’ve been working solely on what Doddy wants from a playing point of view,” he said.

“He’s really defensively minded which is a little bit different to Stav, but it obviously will take time to implement what Doddy wants. As we saw against Peel, we showed glimpses that if we can really sustain that for the full four quarters we can test a few sides out over the remaining six games. The challenge for us is to learn the game plan as quickly as we can as a group, and then implement it on game day.

“We did that on the weekend for two and-a-half or three quarters, but unfortunately we couldn’t sustain it for a variety of reasons. It’s an exciting time with a fresh face in Doddy after having Stav for four and-a-half years and he did a really good job but it’s more about now trying to implement what Doddy’s after.”

The Sharks now host the Bulldogs on Sunday and are looking to turnaround the recent trend in derbies that has seen the last 10 be won by the visiting side.

“It’s pretty well known that the home teams in derbies haven’t had a good run of it the last few years, but we are 1-1 in derbies so far this year and we are hoping to win the Ciccotosto-Uittenbroek Cup on Sunday,” Stephen said.

“We are still only two games out of the top five as well so funnier things have happened in footy so hopefully the derby can get us up and rolling for the rest of the year. There’s no better time for us to get back to winning than the big stage of derby day.”