{"id":585104,"date":"2026-04-04T14:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585104\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T14:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:00:17","slug":"west-coast-eagles-coach-andrew-mcqualter-admits-his-team-got-taught-a-lesson-by-dominant-sydney-swans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585104\/","title":{"rendered":"West Coast Eagles coach Andrew McQualter admits his team got taught a lesson by dominant Sydney Swans"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Coast coach Andrew McQualter has declared Sydney have given his team a football lesson after the Eagles were handed their fifth-largest defeat in club history during a horror night at Optus Stadium, but denied his players got ahead of themselves after enjoying recent wins.<\/p>\n

The Eagles had no answers to the dominant Swans, losing 24.19 (163) to 4.11 (35). West Coast entered the game with optimism after they beat North Melbourne and Port Adelaide in the last two matches, but were powerless to stop Sydney.<\/p>\n

McQualter said the gap between his young team and the Swans was clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the players got ahead of themselves. I think Sydney played incredibly well today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had plenty of plans in place, but we were not able to stop them. I thought their speed, their zip, their reaction was at a completely different level to ours, and probably different to what our level has been the last few weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be fair, I think our group\u2019s been up for a couple of weeks, and really riding some emotion. We didn\u2019t get carried away at all internally, but there\u2019s some emotion to our players with winning a few games, and it looked to just take its toll a little bit. We didn\u2019t quite have the same energy we\u2019ve been playing with.\u201d<\/p>\n

West Coast started poorly for the fourth game in a row, but this time, they couldn\u2019t find ways to drag themselves back into the match.<\/p>\n

Isaac Heeney and Brodie Grundy tore the Eagles apart . Heeney kicked four goals and had 26 disposals while Grundy produced 28 possessions, nine clearances and one goal.<\/p>\n

West Coast trailed by 63 points at halftime and never got back into the contest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game got worse as it went on, and the scoreboard got worse. We\u2019ve got to endure for longer,\u201d McQualter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis game\u2019s relentless. It\u2019s every week. Every single opposition you play is capable of playing at a high level. This is the best comp we\u2019ve got. So when you\u2019re five per cent off, it\u2019s a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LiamCamera IconLiam Baker after their loss to the Swans by 128 points. Credit: Jackson Flindell\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

West Coast badly missed star midfielder Elliot Yeo after he injured his groin last week, and Swans tagger James Jordan blanketed Harley Reid all night.<\/p>\n

The number one draft pick struggled to get into the game for the first three quarters, but McQualter defended Reid\u2019s discipline after he gave away free kicks and a 50m penalty.<\/p>\n

He said West Coast must help Reid when he is getting tagged.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t help Harley enough,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"TheCamera IconThe Eagles after their loss to the Swans by 128 points. Credit: Jackson Flindell\/The West Australian<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried quite a few different things, moved him positionally a few times, and he was not quite the level he\u2019s been the last few weeks. But that\u2019s what you get from a 20-year-old.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need Harley playing great footy for us. That\u2019s what it is needed. So his teammates have got to help him do that. And that\u2019s the first hard tag he\u2019s copped this year. So we\u2019ll have a look at it, and we\u2019ll work, get to work on it\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast coach Andrew McQualter has declared Sydney have given his team a football lesson after the Eagles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,588,85,7067],"class_list":{"0":"post-585104","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-sport","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-west-coast-eagles"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585104","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=585104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}