Beau Casson - WA Men's Cricket Coach (06.10.2026)

Mark Duffield (0:00)

Welcome back to the SENWA studio. We're out here at Optus Stadium, Tuesday morning in Perth, Thursday morning in Perth. Gonna be Western Australia's opening Sheffield Shield fixture of the season. They come up against their traditional rivals, the Queensland Bulls.

Their new coach, Beau Casson, joins us on the line. Beau, welcome.

Beau Casson (0:22)

G'day Mark, thanks for having me. Very much looking forward to the season ahead.

Mark Duffield (0:26)

So, what can we expect of this one, mate? Queensland traditionally strong, yourselves traditionally strong, although you've had a couple of middle of the road seasons of the last two.

What do we expect from this fixture?

Beau Casson (0:39)

It's gonna be a great contest. I think over the, you're right, hasn't been the last couple of years from a shield performing side of things that WACA wants to obviously do. But over the next four days, it's gonna be a great contest. We've always had really close battles with Queensland. I think there's similar conditions in terms of, you know, Gabba to the WACA.

There's nuances that are slightly different, but also the way they shape up in terms of their side. We're very similar in terms of the way we match up. But yeah, looking forward to it. I know pre-season's a long slog, so some players, some players absolutely love it. But now it's about putting all the words into action and getting out there in first session, day one. Looking to put our best foot forward to set up the game and create it over the next four days.

Mark Duffield (1:26)

The nature of the WACA wicket is interesting. It's changed a bit over the last couple of years, hasn't it? It's sort of been a bit, it's not quite as fast and true as it used to be.

Beau Casson (1:40)

Oh, look, I think the soil content and the experts, I'll leave the experts to work through that space, but our ground team have done an incredible job here. I think we've seen, it's always a result wicket.

Sometimes the game gives you, you have a few speed bumps along the way because the ball probably misbehaves a little bit more than what you anticipate, but we're expecting a very similar wicket than what we've had. I know there's been a lot of media around the wickets and things like that, but the big emphasis we want to have is we want to make our home ground our fortress, where opposition sides don't like to come and play. And that's what we've worked on in the off season. But yeah, looking forward to, I suppose having that discussion with Aaron Hardy is a good way to try to to the toss and trying to digest and take all the information on it we can, to make sure we can make a really well informed decision when it comes to the toss of the coin.

Mark Duffield (2:32)

It's been a bit of a muddled start. You had the rain affected, no result against South Australia, and then obviously knocked over for 115 against Tasmania in the one day cup. Any concerns to come out of those two matches?

Beau Casson (2:46)

I was disappointed with the performances that we put up in terms of being knocked over for that score. We had internal introspection, individually and collectively, on the areas that we didn't do very well and the areas we want to look to improve. But as I said, the game of career is going to give us one, two combos occasionally to the nose like a boxer. It gives you the chance to reflect and go, well, what am I doing? And is it making me a better player? Are we continually going in the direction we're after? I'm very confident with the foundation and the program we've put in over the off season that we are.

But look, probably there are only periods in those two games, I think from about the eighth over against South Australia, we were none for 42, and then we were five for about 60 in the space of about five overs. So obviously that was the area where the game was won and lost, and that's an area we're looking to rectify.

But also with that in shield cricket, we had the chance to get a couple of players back around the group that have been away playing cricket, which as you know, you can train really hard and do all the right things in that space. But now it's game time, and the players have got miles under the legs. They're certainly very beneficial at this time of year, and we're looking forward to rolling out that side when we come Tuesday against Queensland.