While full of praise for Max Gawn's performance, West Coast coach Andrew McQualter said there was more to his team's clearance losses on Saturday night than Melbourne's ruck dominance as the Eagles' ground-level midfielders struggled to impact.
The Eagles experimented through the midfield and turned to forwards Liam Ryan and Tyler Bockman at different stages, while defender Brady Hough continued as an onballer.
The coach said West Coast was finding a balance between experimenting in games to learn versus keeping their structures and roles settled week to week.
"The more levers you pull, the more things are out of whack for what you plan for all week and potentially the more confusion comes into the game," he said.
"So it's a fine line as a coach and a coaching group to how many levers you try and pull at one time to fix an area.
"But we are learning what works for us and we'll learn more about what it will look like and how we need to look to get the game looking the way we need it and want it to."
Hurting the Eagles this season has been the absence of star midfielder Elliot Yeo, with McQualter confirming on Saturday that the dual club champion would undergo surgery next week after pre-season knee and ankle injuries.
"Yeo is going to have some surgery just to remove some hardware from his ankle. He'll have a couple of weeks off legs and then build," the coach said.
"We're really confident Yeo is going to play a fair chunk of football towards the end of the season.
"He was obviously having challenges to progress his rehab prior to this, so I think at least he's got an answer now of what needs to happen for the next steps."
