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<\/p>\nWest Coast Eagles\u2019 head of women\u2019s football Michelle Cowan has praised the side\u2019s resilience after a tumultuous couple of weeks where illness and injury ran rife through the club.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking ahead of this weekend\u2019s clash against Collingwood, Cowan says they will continue to monitor the players who have been unwell and may make late withdrawals if necessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have several players that\u2019ll be a test,\u201d she told\u00a0SportFM.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLike 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRight up until two o\u2019clock on Sunday, we\u2019ll continue to monitor it because we want to make sure that we\u2019re looking after everybody, our staff, players and make sure that it\u2019s not contagious to anybody else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019s former side, Melbourne, to cap off their availability issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cowan says Pearce has done well to keep the group on track despite the speed bumps affecting the side on and off field.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve applied that again this week, looking forward to Collingwood, which will probably be a very similar game to GWS as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, they\u2019ll have to overcome tough opponents in Geelong, Adelaide, Sydney and Carlton in the back end of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Cowan believes West Coast can make history this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we play the game of footy, and there\u2019s some really good energy around the footy club at the moment,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just know we\u2019ve got to just keep working really hard. We got a touch-up from Melbourne. They\u2019re an incredible team. They\u2019re top two.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be competing against those top teams, so we\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
IMAGE: West Coast Eagles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast Eagles\u2019 head of women\u2019s football Michelle Cowan has praised the side\u2019s resilience after a tumultuous couple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-182727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182727","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=182727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}