SANFL premiership: Woodville-West Torrens coach Michael Godden motivated by “embarrassing” finals loss

THERE was no hiding the pain when Woodville-West Torrens coach Michael Godden responded to questions after the elimination final loss to South Adelaide last year.

THERE was no hiding the pain when Woodville-West Torrens coach Michael Godden responded to questions after the elimination final loss to South Adelaide last year.

He was devastated. After an encouraging start to the season, the Eagles limped out of the race for the flag with a performance Godden still recalls as an embarrassment.

This defeat hurt deeply, mostly because he knew he had the personnel to deliver much more. The 2011 premiership coach took the blame for the club’s finals demise and within days was focused on strategies to ensure a serious attack on this year’s premiership.

To be successful in modern football, there had to be more emphasis on defensive plans. Godden set about accomplishing that goal, but he refused to budge on not retaining a strong attacking mindset as well.

“We set out to kick 100 points every game,’’ Godden said. “It is not a defensively minded game plan, we want to kick a score.’’ Even when the Eagles were beaten by the Bloods in their season opener, there were no alarm bells screaming at Woodville Oval.

“We looked at everything we did in the pre-season and evaluated that game,’’ Godden said. “We put them alongside each other and said ‘is that anything like we want to play?’ and everyone answered ‘no’ so we said ‘let’s give this a chance’.

“So we re-evaluated and went back to the core values and came out and beat North Adelaide the next week by 80 points, so that validated it.”

Asked how much he was being driven by last year’s elimination final result, he responded: “Heaps, heaps.”