"Take the Whole Freo Team to the MCG" - Craig O'Donoghue, The West Australian (03.08.2026)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Craig O'Donoghue** (0:09)
You will not have to lift a finger.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:11)
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**Mark Duffield** (0:20)
Yep.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:21)
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**Mark Duffield** (0:30)
Welcome back to the SNWA studio out here at Upto Stadium. On this Monday morning in Perth today, Craig O'Donoghue joins us from The West Australian. He not only was across the freemanel win over the Western Bulldogs on Friday night, but he was also at the Peel versus Swan Districts game at the weekend as well. Codd, welcome.

**Craig O'Donoghue** (0:52)
And I was at the Morley Bulldogs versus Manning game as well on Saturday morning. So you can just add to the under 12s matches I was taking photos at as well. So that's always fun.

**Mark Duffield** (1:04)
Of course you would have been. I would have been disappointed had you not been there, Craig.
Hey, an umpiring question off the top first. So West Coast questions the umpiring of Harley Reed last week, and then he gets six freezes very early in the game against Richmond yesterday. Is this a tactic that other clubs will use now if they want one of their star players to get a better deal from the whistleblowers?

**Craig O'Donoghue** (1:31)
So I didn't think there was any doubt about any of the six that he got yesterday. Like, they were a pretty obvious free kick. There was a hold on the ball where the ball was dragged in, obviously by one of the Richmond players, and that was going to be holding the ball no matter who was lying on top of him. Harley got hit in the head, I think it was three times for the game.
He got a push in the back is my memory from another one. They were really obvious. You don't even have to think about it. The old granny and the grandstand, you know, with only one eye, would have noticed that all of those were free kicks. So I didn't think that he got any of the 50-50 ones, which would have stood out as the umpires are genuinely looking after him.
So yeah, I didn't think it was any doubt about any of them. I thought he changed the way he played slightly. I thought there were a couple of times yesterday where he chose not to make contact with players because he knew he was going to give away a free kick. I think that might have been the biggest thing that came from those conversations, that he can't just keep running into packs recklessly because he will give away a free kick. And there was one where he could have easily bumped one of the blokes in the middle of the ground, I think during the third quarter, where he ran him 20 metres, then he pulled up late. And I thought you would have run through that bloke last week like you did Matt Johnson. And there was another one on the boundary line where he chose not to tackle because the ball was going over the boundary line. And he would have laid the tackle last week and risked giving away a free kick. I thought he changed his behaviour slightly.

**Mark Duffield** (2:47)
Yep, I'd agree with that. I think he's learning all the time, Harley. And I think that's a really encouraging sign for West Coast because there is still a few things that he's got room for improvement in. So hopefully he can work on those things in the last three games this year and also over summer and come back even bigger and better next year. Hey, the Western Bulldogs. Now, was that a flood?
Because Luke Beveridge was kind of denying that it was a flood.
Or was that just business as usual for the Bulldogs when they come up against a good team?

**Craig O'Donoghue** (3:19)
Well, when you start with your winger on the back edge of the centre square, and he runs back straight away to be a loose man in defence. And then within a couple of seconds, everybody else is back there as well. I call that a flood. So we weren't planning on doing it, but I reckon it's pretty easy to send the runner out and say, can you forward or get back to the forward line, please? Can we not have 15 guys in the back line of the entire match? Because it's going to be hard for us to get it out.