AARON BLACK PLAYER COLUMN – ROUND 22

A WEST Perth premiership player will be writing a column for the club's website every week of the 2014 WAFL season. This week's edition is Aaron Black's latest offering.

IT HAS been a pretty tough and frustrating year for us. We've been very inconsistent with our form and that's disappointing because when we play well we are pretty much unbeatable, but this year when we've played poorly we have played very poorly.

That is frustrating because we know how well we can play when we are on top of everything and playing to our game style. There has been some good things to come out of the season, though, especially with the young group coming through who have had the chance to show that they can play senior towards the end of the year.

The young guys who have played have done really well like Mitch van Berlo, Luke Meadows, Kris Shannon and Max Alexander, and it's really good to see them play well in the games that they've played in. Although it has been a disappointing, that's something really positive that has come out of this year.

We didn’t start the season off the way we wanted to do with a few close losses before getting our first win on the board, and that put us on the back foot early on. Then once you start poorly it's really hard to come back from a few close losses. That really just affected our form for the rest of year. That definitely shouldn’t happen, but it's the way the season has ended up turning out like.

It is actually a bit of an empty feeling right now going from last year when we had such an exciting build-up to the end of the season heading into the finals series, but now we only have two games to go. It's definitely disappointing and frustrating because we know when we play at our best we are hard to beat, and if we were there in the finals we might be a chance but we just haven’t played consistently enough throughout the year.

We have tried close to everything this year to fix certain things and change small things in the game plan, and anything you can think of we have tried to fix what has been happening. We can't really put our finger on it because on week we'll go out and play so well, and play the game plan to perfection but then the next week it doesn’t work out like we know it can.

I'm not sure what has been the problem because we have shown that we can kick big scores and beat opposition teams the way we did last year, but we just haven’t been able to do it consistently. I can't put a finger on why we've been so inconsistent where on week we can kick extremely low scores and then a high score the next week. We have the firepower there, we just can't do it week in and week out.

We now have only two games left to play with 'Slick' and Dan Hunt as well. It's very disappointing to see both of them retire at the end of the year because they are fantastic blokes to have around the club, and are tremendous WAFL football and will always be West Perth greats. To have them go at the end of the year is obviously disappointing, but they both have bigger and better things to move on to. The last two games with them will be exciting, though, just to play the two games with both footballers and we will try to enjoy them and get something out of them.

We are in a bit of a transition period with our side now with a lot of our senior players retiring, but the middle tier of guys that we've got who are between 30 and 80 games over the next five or 10 years are going to hold this football club in good stead. Just to top it off with the great group of young kids that are coming through is really going to help us in the coming seasons.

I have been very pleased with my season personally. I have been very consistent this year and kicked more goals than I have in previous years which is something that I have really wanted to work on. I think my overall skills have improved as well and I think that comes with experience, and learning how much time you have and obviously the more you train and practice the better your skills get. When you have poor kicking games it's disappointing, but overall this year I think every part of my game has pretty much improved a little bit which is what I want to continue doing.

We don't want to think about pre-season already, but with the way this year has gone we know it's important and it's not that far away. Once we knew we couldn’t play finals, we have put a lot of emphasis on really trying to take the game on more and for these young guys to come in and get a chance, and show that they can play at league level.  That is something that the coaching staff have really pushed for those young guys to take the game on, have an impact on the game and continue their good form from the reserves. If we can master the game plan and have these young guys have a big impact on games week in, week out then I think next year is going to be a good year for us again.