West Coast are battling a bout of the flu and a string of injuries ahead of a clash with second-placed Melbourne on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Ruck Liz McGrath rolled her ankle in Sunday\u2019s western derby and is set to miss up to a month of football, while sensational draftee Lucia Painter will miss the trip to Casey Fields after a delayed concussion.<\/p>\n
Veteran Emma Swanson is also out of the match after receiving a one-match ban for striking Docker Gabby O\u2019Sullivan in the second term of the seven-point derby loss.<\/p>\n
However, coach Daisy Pearce was confident her side had developed the depth to cover the mounting injury ward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beauty of our squad this year is we just keep trying to develop depth across our full list, and with only 30 players on an AFLW list, you head into the season knowing we\u2019ll need it at some point,\u201d Pearce said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing for Lu, she\u2019ll miss this week with concussion. She was cleared to return to play on the day, but then developed some symptoms after.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s doing well now and progressing well, but the main thing is looking after her and ensuring she\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiz will miss with her ankle. She rolled her ankle and will miss three to four weeks, and then Swanny unfortunately got suspended for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pearce won\u2019t be able to call on the experience of Dana Hooker to cover the leadership void left by Swanson, either, revealing the club had been battling an outbreak of flu in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cHooks has had some illness herself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had some flu go through the team over the last couple of weeks, and she was one of the last to go down, so she\u2019s missed a bit of training, so she\u2019ll be unavailable this week. Definitely would have loved her experience out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The losses come at the worst possible time for the rising group.<\/p>\n
Their loss to Fremantle has put West Coast a game behind the top four; however, an unlikely victory would put the Eagles in the box seat to achieve their maiden finals appearance, with four of their last six matches to be played at Mineral Resources Park.<\/p>\n
And Pearce has highlighted the midfield battle as the key to the visitors\u2019 success.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think one of Melbourne\u2019s real strengths is their fundamentals around the ball, so as damaging as their forwards are, it\u2019s sometimes the supply they get.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re so clean with their skills around the ball, so a big focus for us will be our pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a big area of growth for us this year, our ability to sustain our pressure through quarters, so we\u2019ll be looking to bring our best pressure game because we think if we can limit the supply that their forwards get, it will really help our backs out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably the biggest thing we\u2019re focusing on in terms of nullifying their impact. There\u2019s some good players but we back our backs in if we can get pressure on the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast are battling a bout of the flu and a string of injuries ahead of a clash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,25912,64,63,55,639,588,85,7067],"class_list":{"0":"post-151604","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-aflw","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-australian-football-league","13":"tag-australianfootballleague","14":"tag-sport","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-west-coast-eagles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}