West Coast have the potential to create an extended premiership window if the club’s older tier can maintain their high levels for the next few AFL seasons, according to coach John Worsfold.
Last year, Worsfold predicted his team might experience two mini premiership windows either side of a slight rebuilding phase as the club’s in-form veterans neared their end.
One window would feature the likes of 30-year-old Darren Glass, Dean Cox (30), Andrew Embley (30), Daniel Kerr (28), Adam Selwood (27) and Quinten Lynch (29), while the other would be led by rising stars Nic Naitanui, Scott Selwood, Luke Shuey, Andrew Gaff, Josh Kennedy and Jack Darling once most of the older brigade retired.
But after masterminding West Coast’s rise from wooden spooners to preliminary finalists last year, Worsfold is confident he can oversee a smooth transition which results in one long premiership window rather than two mini ones.
“You may not be able to pick the difference,” Worsfold said.
“There may be one that has Glass, Cox, Embley and Kerr in it.
“Now if those guys played on for another two seasons after this one, there would be no gap.
“With players coming through, combined with the development of the other players around it, we’d be staying right up there.
“If all those (older) guys retired at the end of this year, it may leave us with some development players still coming through. But that is unlikely to happen.
“We’d be confident they can at least play at the elite level strongly like they did last year.”
Worsfold believed last year was the start of his team’s premiership window, and has challenged his players to improve on fourth spot in 2012.
“I would say we had a fair crack at it last year,” Worsfold said.
“We pushed Collingwood (in a qualifying final) with a chance that if we had have beaten them, we would have got a home preliminary final.
“We want to try to be better than last year. But we’ve got to make the four first, and that’s going to be a huge challenge.”
With forward Mark LeCras out injured for the year and Brad Ebert traded to Port Adelaide, Worsfold said the likes of Chris Masten, Koby Stevens, Brad Sheppard, Josh Hill, Ashton Hams, Gerrick Weedon, Pat McGinnity, Ash Smith and Tom Swift would battle it out to earn more game time in 2012.
Meanwhile, Kerr, Scott Selwood and Will Schofield will line up for their first competitive hit-out of 2012 when the Eagles take on Port Adelaide in Mandurah on Saturday.
West Coast posted comfortable wins over Essendon and Fremantle two weeks ago, and are favourites to win the pre-season competition.
Port Adelaide, who beat Carlton but lost to Adelaide last week, will be without David Rodan, Jay Schulz, Jacob Surjan, Danyle Pearce and skipper Domenic Cassisi against the Eagles.
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