West Coast Eagles’ head of women’s football Michelle Cowan has praised the side’s resilience after a tumultuous couple of weeks where illness and injury ran rife through the club.
The Eagles refused to let this rattle them, and came away with a resounding 42-point win to put them back inside the top eight despite some last-minute withdrawals.
Veteran midfielder Ali Drennan and defender Roxy Roux were ruled out and replaced by Kayley Kavanagh and top-up player Lisa Steane hours before the bounce.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s clash against Collingwood, Cowan says they will continue to monitor the players who have been unwell and may make late withdrawals if necessary.
“We’ll have several players that’ll be a test,” she told SportFM.
“Like the weekend just gone, we had four players who were a test before the game, two or three hours and 10 minutes before the game, that had to have a final test. One of them was a late withdrawal as well in Roxy.
“Right up until two o’clock on Sunday, we’ll continue to monitor it because we want to make sure that we’re looking after everybody, our staff, players and make sure that it’s not contagious to anybody else.”
West Coast has faced a difficult three weeks on-field too, with losses against Fremantle in the Western Derby, a 51-point shellacking against coach Daisy Pearce’s former side, Melbourne, to cap off their availability issues.
However, they bounced back well against the Giants, who were up and about after a shock win against Sydney in the Battle of the Bridge the week prior, to claim their first back-to-back wins since 2021.
Cowan says Pearce has done well to keep the group on track despite the speed bumps affecting the side on and off field.
“We got a really good lesson when we went over to Casey and played Melbourne and some really good evidence as to where we are at with competition,” she said.
“I thought we played a really good fourth quarter against Melbourne and they reviewed really thoroughly and were really clear on what we wanted to achieve last week.
“They’ve applied that again this week, looking forward to Collingwood, which will probably be a very similar game to GWS as well.”
With five games to go, West Coast are daring to dream of a maiden finals appearance in their six-year history, currently sitting in eighth with four wins and a healthy percentage.
However, they’ll have to overcome tough opponents in Geelong, Adelaide, Sydney and Carlton in the back end of the season.
But Cowan believes West Coast can make history this season.
“That’s why we play the game of footy, and there’s some really good energy around the footy club at the moment,” she said.
“We just know we’ve got to just keep working really hard. We got a touch-up from Melbourne. They’re an incredible team. They’re top two.
“We want to be competing against those top teams, so we’ve just got to get to work. All of us, our entire program and if we all do that, I think we give ourselves a really good shot.”
IMAGE: West Coast Eagles