Coach Adam Simpson has been left with a sour taste in his mouth after West Coast’s shock one-point loss to Fremantle – and now the onus is on the team’s star-studded midfield to make it up to him.
The Eagles led by 24 points at the 10-minute mark of the final quarter before a five-goal burst from the injury-hit Dockers turned Saturday’s match on its head.
West Coast lost the clearances 13-8 in the final term as the Dockers ran rampant, with Simpson set to analyse the quarter in fine detail to determine exactly what went wrong in the 8.7 (55) to 7.12 (54) loss.
One certainty is that West Coast weren’t lacking talent in the middle.
The Eagles unleashed their full-strength midfield, with new recruit Tim Kelly joining Elliot Yeo, Andrew Gaff, Luke Shuey, Dom Sheed, and ruckman Nic Naitanui in a powerful engine room.
Fremantle had two-time Brownlow medallist Nat Fyfe up their sleeve, but unsung heroes Andrew Brayshaw, Darcy Tucker, and Brett Bewley also did a lot of the heavy lifting.
“Overall the mids probably got beaten in that last quarter and that just leaves a sour taste in our mouths,” Simpson said.
“So I’ve got to look at that and see what the reasons were.
“I wouldn’t call it complacency but when you concede five goals in the row and then you see the effort in the last two or three minutes (from the team), you sort of say, ‘Where was that?’.
“We didn’t lose any points from it, but we don’t like losing.”
West Coast enter the season proper having lost both of their pre-season games.
In contrast, Fremantle will enter round one full of confidence after posting wins over Carlton and West Coast under new coach Justin Longmuir.
The one concern to come out of Saturday’s game was Stephen Hill’s early exit.
Hill has been plagued by soft tissue injuries over the past two years, and he went off at three-quarter time after sensing something in his troublesome quad.
“He’s a little bit sore. He felt some awareness in his quad and the position we’re in we’re just no-risk,” Longmuir said.
“We’ll get it scanned, do all the right things, get him to rehab tomorrow and get the physios to have a look at him and hopefully we get some good news.”
