New West Coast captain Luke Shuey wants to emulate predecessor Shannon Hurn in more ways than one.
The revered clubman’s main target is obvious: to skipper the Eagles to an AFL premiership.
But the second comes through a more narrow lens, with Shuey, who turns 30 in June, aiming to play his best football in the twilight years of his career.
Hurn proved his critics wrong when he emerged as one of the competition’s best leaders over the past two seasons, winning his first two All-Australian jumpers in consecutive years on the so-called ‘wrong side of 30’.
Shuey, who took over the captaincy after Hurn stepped down in December, is entering his 12th AFL season in 2020 and is showing no signs of slowing down after 201 games and two club best-and-fairest awards.
“Hopefully I can continue to play good footy,” the 2018 Norm Smith medallist told AAP.
“Every year you’ve got to aim to better what you did last season because otherwise I think you lose that competitive drive.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have played with guys that have played really well late in their careers.
“The evidence is there that it can happen and hopefully as a leader I can play well first and foremost and see where the year takes us.”
Shuey has been buoyed by the arrival of boom trade acquisition Tim Kelly from Geelong and the return to full fitness of ruck star Nic Naitanui, who managed just five games around injury battles last year.
Together with Andrew Gaff, Elliot Yeo, Jack Redden, Dom Sheed and a growing band of capable second-tier midfielders, they form one of the competition’s strongest on-ball divisions.
“It’s exciting but it doesn’t mean a lot if we don’t turn up with the right attitude and aren’t willing to get our hands dirty,” Shuey said.
“We weren’t at our best on the weekend against Fremantle and got beaten around the midfield area.
“It was a good lesson for us that even though it was a (pre-season) game we did want to get most things right and we probably didn’t do that.
“But we’re confident in what we’re doing and there’s a lot of experience throughout our midfield now, which is important.”
West Coast were this week picked as the second-most likely club to reach this year’s grand final – behind Greater Western Sydney – by rival club captains.
The Eagles are on track to field a near-full strength line-up when they kick off their flag assault against Melbourne at Optus Stadium on March 22.