West Coast coach Daisy Pearce admits she’s disappointed in the Eagles missing the finals but says there is still plenty of upside to be gained from their season.
The Eagles’ already faint finals hopes were officially put to bed in a 22-point loss to Sydney at the weekend, their third defeat in a row to fall out of contention.
It’s an underwhelming response to a maiden finals campaign last year, but Pearce said her side is still on the right track for long-term success
“We want to play finals every year, and we want to keep winning, but we also know progress isn’t linear,” she said.
“We’ve seen some great growth in certain individuals like Charlotte Riggs going into the ruck or Lucia Painter going into the midfield. On an individual basis, we’ve seen good growth in a number of players.
“As a collective, we showed on the weekend our scoring and stoppage numbers have improved, but the lesson for us was that in focusing on those things our defence dropped away, which has been at the core of what we’ve built over the last few years.”
However, Pearce knows there is still plenty of work to be done, hinting a big pre-season looms for her team, especially if it is shortened with the prospect of the fixtures being brought forward next year.
“We’ve got to work hard on developing all of our players; we’ve heavily invested in the draft over the journey, which means we have a lot of young players
“From a fundamentals point of view, we have to make sure we can execute under pressure and in that early period of development, individual work is priceless, and we want to make it really specific for each individual in their roles so they can come better
“We’ve had a lot of change as well this year, a new coaching panel, nine new players, so consolidating the learnings from this year and making sure we don’t move away from focusing on our defence, whilst not taking away from our individual improvement
It comes as Bella Lewis is set to become the second Eagle to reach the 75-game mark in as many weeks following Emma Swanson’s milestone match last weekend.
The West Coast co-captain also believes her side is getting closer to where they want to be and is desperate to carry some good momentum into next year.
“I think there’s been so much growth and we just want to get better every week and this weekend is another good opportunity to do that against a really strong outfit in Hawthorn,” she said.
“It’s important for us to go out on a high and fighting until the final siren goes and that’s definitely going to be our messaging this week.”
