The West Coast Eagles are focused on developing their young side, and won’t let a challenging season detract from the vision the club has for the future of the emerging group, AFLW coach Michael Prior says.
The Eagles have been frustrated by a one-win campaign to date, despite exciting signs of growth from promising players including Lauren Wakfer, Ella Roberts and Charlie Thomas.
Following West Coast’s 70-point loss to Narrm on the weekend at Mineral Resources Park, Prior opened up about comments he made in the post-game press conference, and said they came from a place of frustration and passion.
“It was a comment borne out of a lot of frustration and passion, it was definitely the wrong time, and it wasn’t the view of the footy club,” Prior said.
“It was a lot of frustration given the second half that we delivered on the weekend, our first half of footy was really solid against a top team, and our second half wasn’t good enough.
“But what I said was inappropriate, I’ve apologised and put out a statement, I’ve spoken to the players and the club about that, I’m regretful and sorry about that but as I said, frustration really led to that.
“We do want to play the best teams and we’ve got another opportunity in a couple of weeks’ time when we come up against Adelaide.”
Eagles captain Emma Swanson said that despite seeing little success so far, the culture and closeness of the group goes a long way to keeping the team focused on the positives.
“I’ve been here for five years and as you said, we haven’t won too many games so that’s frustrating within itself,” Swanson said.
“It’s pretty easy in the trenches to get frustrated at win-loss but I think taking a step back and looking at it holistically, we’ve got a really young list and sometimes it’s frustrating we’re not getting over the line.
“But we can take a step back and come into the club and the culture we’ve been able to create and the togetherness and connectedness of the players, it makes me really proud, and I truly do believe that the light is at the end of the tunnel, and we’ll keep working to get there.”
Two seasons into an AFLW team rebuild, Prior said he’s excited by the local talent acquired by the club, and it will just take some time for the pieces to fall into place.
“What we’ve got is a really young, exciting list and I think we’ve set ourselves up,” Prior said.
“We made a decision as a club a couple of seasons ago to really cut our list back, and we cut our list back by half, which any team in any competition throughout Australia or the world who cuts half of their squad and then starts a rebuild, it’s going to take a little bit of time.
“But we think we’ve got some of the best young talent in WA playing on our list right now.”
West Coast take on Essendon on Sunday at Windy Hill for their final road trip of the season, and Prior said beating the Dons in a pre-season match gives the team confidence, despite the current ladder positions. “I’ve watched a bit of that (pre-season game) and how we went about it, and we played some really good footy that day,” Prior said.
“We should get a lot of confidence, I think they were pretty much at full strength that day so yeah, we’ve played them before, and we’ve done well.
“But what they’ve done since that game compared to what we’ve done since that game is completely different, they’re sitting fifth on the ladder and we’re 17th.
“So, we’ve got a lot of exciting things to look forward to because we know can do it against them, but there’s a lot of hard work to do as well.”
