Tough loss a lesson for West Coast
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West Coast will lick their wounds and learn their lessons from a brave three-point AFL defeat to Collingwood at the MCG on Saturday.
Coach John Worsfold believes his side will take much away from a narrow loss in a game they could have conceivably won had it lasted another few minutes.
In a match of several momentum swings, the Eagles eventually fell 12.13 (85) to 12.10 (82) after fighting back from 27 points down late in the third quarter.
While West Coast slip off the top of the ladder with the defeat, Worsfold believes his side is better than the one which surprised in reaching last season’s finals, with more growth to come.
And his players will benefit greatly from what surely was a finals preview against another likely top four side.
“We’re a better team than we were this time last year,” Worsfold said.
“We are stronger as a group. (But) we have to get better. We want to be one of the elite teams in the competition and to do that, we still think we’ve got to improve.
“Margins in games mean nothing if you’re not learning from it and improving for your next game, and every game after that.”
The Eagles now have a 9-3 win-loss record – though they have lost two of their past three narrowly.
Eagles forward Quinten Lynch played his 200th AFL match, booting two goals and playing well.
He too believes the Eagles can walk away proud, though they need to learn from the defeat.
“You don’t play footy to win by 100 points every week. You play footy for the tough contests, to enjoy them, to learn from them, and get better from them,” Lynch said.
West Coast’s next match is at home to winless Gold Coast next weekend.
© AAP 2013The Crowd Says (10) | Page 1 of Comments
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June 24th 2012 @ 10:27am
Lroy said | June 24th 2012 @ 10:27am | Report comment
I don’t want to oversimplify things, but it was basically a titanic battle between the West Coast back-line, and the Collingwood midfield..
Eagles back 6 under pressure all night, most sides would have conceded 20 goals under than onslaught, their backs kept them in the game. Not sure why Glass didnt play on Cloke… MacKenzie was very unlucky mind you.. ball bounces over his head, Cloke goals.. cest la vie..
Darren Jolly was probably the most important player on the field, he single handedly contained the Eagles twin towers, Nicnat and Cox… he really is a good player….West Coast forwards made the most of their limited opportunities… but they still need Josh Kennedy back, gives them that extra target up front… thought the Pies half back line provided the springboard to a lot of their counterattacks.
Beams was sensational, best on ground. Really like this guy, very brave to pull out of the GF last year, saw his interview, looks like a top quality bloke as well. Good luck to him for the rest of the year. Swan… oh man.. why didnt Woosh tag him??? You cant have 2 guys (Beams and Swann) getting 80 quality possessions between them and expect to win can you??
Epic arm wrestle… as a WCE fan I take no solace from the loss… Pies should have been further in front at quarter time… they really could have broken the game open at 27 points up… think the final score may have flattered the Eagles.. they have a lot of work to do.
they had a few players struggle… still have Embly Nicoski Kennedy to come back..but will they be fit enough come finals time??
Brenan and Sheppard both did really well.. think they are good enough to stay in the side if the others come back
June 24th 2012 @ 10:04pm
sirnoob_51 said | June 24th 2012 @ 10:04pm | Report comment
Too right about beams just wrote an article on him
June 25th 2012 @ 10:58am
Lroy said | June 25th 2012 @ 10:58am | Report comment
A nice, can you send the link? Ill go and have a look, Beams may be my favorite player in the AFL, even if I am a WCE fan
June 24th 2012 @ 1:25pm
TW said | June 24th 2012 @ 1:25pm | Report comment
Woosha said last week – Kennedy about 3 weeks from a start and casually mentioned the club was maybe looking at Mark Le Cras making a surprise return after knee surgery earlier this year.
Embley is running laps and participating in some work after his shoulder operation.
IMHO Brennan will probably make it to the seniors – We need his pace which has not been fully exploited yet.
June 24th 2012 @ 2:26pm
Lats said | June 24th 2012 @ 2:26pm | Report comment
MATE!!! You are on the money with Brennan and his pace, he’s the only guy in our midfield who can break away from the packs…
Nicoski is pretty quick so the pair of them might give us that extra ingredient we have been missing.
June 24th 2012 @ 10:08pm
sirnoob_51 said | June 24th 2012 @ 10:08pm | Report comment
If only Brennans snap with about 3 mins to go hadnt missed maby we would have come away with a win. Speaking of people with pace were are missing Embley so much as much as we have a solid midfield we could use his pace and help support Kerr out on the wings. Plus he has a thumping boot which could provide us with some more goal kicking potential in the midfield with his goals on the run outside 50.
June 25th 2012 @ 10:37am
Nathan of Perth said | June 25th 2012 @ 10:37am | Report comment
Whenever you have a game decided by less than a goal there are a million “if only’s” – this is the way the cookie crumbled however. Personally, I think that if we can give them this good of a shake in the H&A in front of a Pies crowd, we can go the distance if we meet them on the final day with 60,000 corporates diffusing the home ground advantage.
June 25th 2012 @ 11:03am
Lroy said | June 25th 2012 @ 11:03am | Report comment
So true… 2 tight games,(Lions & Pies) 2 minutes to go, Jack Darling running toward goal with the ball bouncing in front of him, ball bounces the wrong way both times… if it sits up he kicks a goal and we win.. but it doesn’t, so we lose… C’est la vie
June 26th 2012 @ 4:08pm
Gezza said | June 26th 2012 @ 4:08pm | Report comment
There are a couple of adages that nearly always ring true!
Champions know when to retire
Good teams win the close ones
June 27th 2012 @ 2:38am
Jack said | June 27th 2012 @ 2:38am | Report comment
you forget another adage Geeza – Premierships aren’t won in June!