{"id":585184,"date":"2026-04-04T14:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585184\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T14:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T14:53:09","slug":"andrew-mcqualter-round-4-press-conference-west-coast-eagles-128-point-loss-to-sydney-swans-harley-reid-tagged-by-james-jordan-says-side-may-have-been-too-young-latest-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585184\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew McQualter Round 4 press conference, West Coast Eagles 128 point loss to Sydney Swans, Harley Reid tagged by James Jordan, says side may have been too young, latest news"},"content":{"rendered":"

West Coast coach Andrew McQualter has conceded his side were \u201cpotentially\u201d too young an outfit to take on a potent Sydney line-up on Easter Saturday, which handed them a brutal 128-point loss in Round 4. <\/a><\/p>\n

The visiting side recorded their greatest-ever away victory in Sydney and South Melbourne\u2019s 130-season history, in a damning reality check coming off back-to-back wins for the first time in well over a year.<\/p>\n

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The Eagles fielded the 10 youngest players of the full 46 that took to the field on Saturday night, which prompted McQualter to consider post-game whether the balance of their demographic was slightly tipped too far in favour of youth.<\/p>\n

\u201cPotentially (we were too young). It is something we\u2019re weary of, and I\u2019ve said it many times now that we need to make sure we support our young players with the right amount of maturity,\u201d McQualter told media at Optus Stadium.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt probably speaks a little bit to the age of the Swans profile as much as it does to ours. But, we\u2019re going to continually pick the team that can surround our youth with the right amount of age.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took West Coast until the 26-minute mark of the second stanza to register their first goal of the night, with the home side looking increasingly likely to register just the fourth goalless opening half in their club\u2019s proud history.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, Sydney had a dozen goalkickers of their own across the match, including seven with two or more \u2014 spearheaded by star duo Isaac Heeney and Charlie Curnow kicking four apiece.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overriding emotion is: We\u2019ve played four games. Two teams who are expected to be at the top of the ladder, and two teams maybe further down the bottom of the ladder \u2014 and we\u2019re not anywhere near where we want to be,\u201d McQualter explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Swans to my eye, and every bit of data today, they were as good a team as I\u2019ve seen this year. Their back-half ball movement is electric. We had plenty of plans in place, but we weren\u2019t able to stop them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur group\u2019s been up for a couple 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 \u2014 and it looked to just take its toll a little bit.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cThe skill of our coaching group will be to: \u2018Treat this game like we\u2019ve treated every other game this year, and get to work on our review about what we did well \u2014 which wasn\u2019t much \u2014 and what went wrong today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will stay really consistent. It didn\u2019t fluctuate when we won, so it won\u2019t fluctuate when we lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young star Harley Reid was heavily tagged by Swans nullifier James Jordan around the ground all night, finishing with 17 disposals that yielded only one clearance and one tackle. <\/p>\n

McQualter admitted that given the ultra-young profile of his side and senior players such as Elliot Yeo being sidelined, it was much harder to act on plans in place to prevent the Tongala product from being completely shut down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion, Jordan is one of the best taggers in the competition. He\u2019s not the first, and won\u2019t be the last that he does that to \u2014 he\u2019s just so good at that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t help Harley enough. We had some plans, but it\u2019s got to be part of what we do going forward, because I\u2019d imagine it\u2019s not the last time he gets tagged.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried quite a few different things. We moved him positionally a few times. He wasn\u2019t quite at the level he\u2019s been at the last few weeks, but that\u2019s what you get from a 20-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n

West Coast\u2019s next shot at redemption will be a tough one in Gather Round, tasked with beating Geelong for the first time since Round 9, 2020. The two sides clash next Sunday afternoon at Norwood Oval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast coach Andrew McQualter has conceded his side were \u201cpotentially\u201d too young an outfit to take on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-585184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585184","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=585184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}