SEN’s Mark Duffield has broken down the key changes that West Coast have made to their game plan in order to bounce back in 2023.
The Eagles are coming off a horror season last year, with the club winning just two games en route to finishing a lowly 17th, missing out on the wooden spoon by percentage.
However after a strong start to pre-season, West Coast are looking to come out firing in 2023 with a completely reworked strategy.
“There is clearly a want to move the ball more quickly, take ground more quickly and try and play on with handball,” he said on SEN WA’s The Run Home.
“Get it back into a dangerous position inside the corridor and get their forwards a good look at it.”
In Duffield’s view, the Eagles' prize recruit Jayden Hunt stood out as the key cog in this fast-paced style.
“Clearly Jayden Hunt is going to be important to them, he played on a wing a bit today and also played a bit of half-back,” he said.
“It’s almost like he’s been given a license to take the game on, he’s prepared to charge, give, get back, take more ground, shift the ball more quickly.”
In order to match this new game plan, Duffield observed that the entire playing group has returned from the break in significantly better shape, responding to the criticism of their fitness last season.
“There’s a lot of blokes who are significantly skinnier than they were this time last year,” he said.
“Luke Shuey spoke about this when they announced him as captain, that basically there were big groups of blokes getting together and doing training sessions doing the downtime, and he said that summer was a really fun time because there were so many of them prepared to do it.
“Clearly they copped some flak, and it is quite stark the change in body shapes.”
While the Eagles are in much better shape, Duffield noted that the change to a new style of football hasn’t been seamless.
“It’s going to be a bit of an adjustment I reckon for some West Coast players… a player like Andrew Gaff used to gather huge possession tallies but he was always their back-relief player,” he said.
“I was watching him a couple of times today where he could have gotten forward and been more assertive and he was still wanting to be the safe back-relief player.
“Their forwards were pretty assertive if they felt a player had ginned around with the ball when he could have got it inside 50 quickly, there was a bit of feedback there, they were letting them know.
“Because they’re reasonably new at it, there were times when players ran into trouble.”
With West Coast’s pre-season looking completely different to last year, Duffield is expecting “significant improvement” from the club.
“A lot of people are saying they’ll be bottom four, I won’t have them in my bottom four,” he said.
“There is still a lot of talent there, the birth certificates worry me, you know the age but we saw what can happen with Geelong last year.
“If you can put youth and speed in around the older class, so it will be interesting to see if they can do that.
“I’ll probably have them in my bottom six or seven, I think they’re capable of winning somewhere between seven to ten games I reckon if all goes well.
“There’ll be a reasonably significant improvement on where they were at last year.”
The Eagles will get to put their new game plan to the test in their first match simulation, facing off against Port Adelaide on February 24.
Image: Eagles Twitter @WestCoastEagles