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Despite two wins from their first three games in 2026, McQualter\u2019s side has since been dealt two triple-figure losses in their last five matches to have queries arise over their on-field progress. The Eagles went into the Round 8 fixture against the Tigers as comfortable favourites, having been often compared to them in recent years given their similar status as a club amid a rebuild.<\/p>\n
Hardwick, who was McQualter\u2019s head coach during his time as an assistant at Punt Road, also defended his now-counterpart in his second year at the helm, citing synergy as one of a number of issues that are tough to deal in his situation.<\/p>\n
Read the full transcript between McQualter, Hardwick and AFL 360 hosts Garry Lyon and Gerard Whateley below.<\/p>\n
Garry Lyon: \u201cMini, a really promising start for the Eagles. You\u2019re 2-1, and the footy world\u2019s barracking for you because it\u2019s been pretty tough over there at the Eagles for a while. Things have dropped off now to the point where that was a really disappointing loss. Against a team that from a skill and availability level, for one of the few occasions where you go in with your nose in front I think. How disappointing is that afternoon for you?<\/p>\n
Andrew McQualter: \u201cIt was disappointing to lose, Gaz. I\u2019ve been flat for a couple of days. I think \u2018Dimma\u2019 used to speak about how you used to go into a \u2018dark coma\u2019 after you lose a game of footy as a coach. But it\u2019s funny, you look back at that game, and we had 64 (inside 50s) with 58% time in forward half. It\u2019s not without hope, so I understand the narrative behind it, and we wanted to win that game as much as anyone. But, we did give ourselves a chance. I think they took eight contested marks in their forward 50, which is a massive number, and credit to them for doing so. Although we didn\u2019t get the win, we actually had some improvement in our game on the weekend compared to the previous few weeks. We probably lost a little bit of our defensive intent over that period of time, which was unfortunate. There will be ebbs and flows with our team and where we\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tigers end dire 12-game losing streak | 01:23<\/p>\n
GL: It\u2019s a little hard to hear, and we take all the information on board. But, when you have that degree of control over a game and you\u2019re not able to put it away, does it not suggest that you\u2019re not moving as quickly as you would like? Had that been Hawthorn or Brisbane, we\u2019d go: \u2018Okay, I understand that\u2019. But, you get a good look (against Richmond), so what\u2019s it saying about your rate of development?<\/p>\n
AM: I think that\u2019s a bit of an unfair question, to be honest Gaz. We\u2019ve got 15 new players on our list, we\u2019ve had an incredible amount of turnover in the last two years since I\u2019ve been at the football club \u2014 almost half of our football club is new. There\u2019s synergy, it takes time for these guys to play together; particularly in our forward line. We understand that we\u2019ve got some work to do, and we\u2019re not shying away from that. We think we\u2019ve got more talent on our list than we\u2019ve had, and now we\u2019ve got to do the work. It\u2019s really going to be a lot of hard work done together to get results that we need. I think that people understand what we\u2019ve done in this list build over the last two years. I understand it\u2019s been a challenging time for our football club for five years, but we feel like we\u2019re on the right path. It\u2019s going to take some time, but we\u2019re doing the right things to build a premiership list.<\/p>\n
GL: I\u2019m not being argumentative for the sake of it, but there would be others that would say: \u2018We heard Elliot Yeo speak post-game (to 3AW), and was very defensive about it\u2019. It\u2019s fair to judge it pretty harshly on that performance I would think. I\u2019m appreciative and cognisant that you are in development and turning players over. You played a side that had 27 players available, so I think that level of scrutiny is fair.<\/p>\n
AM: We understand that we were in a position to win the game and we didn\u2019t win. I\u2019m not going to sit here and argue semantics about the age profile of either team, because we can do that all day. But, everyone understands that both sides are young, both Richmond and us are in a similar position. We had a little bit more availability than them (and) we\u2019ve got some issues in our game that we\u2019re trying to work on at the moment.<\/p>\n
Gerard Whateley: So, you against you from last year to this year, are you not as far advanced as you anticipated you would be?<\/p>\n
AM: From this time last year to now … I\u2019m not delusional, because I still understand that we\u2019re 15th on the ladder, and have only won two games and lost (big) a couple of games. But, we\u2019ve actually improved our game of football since last year. The metrics are all telling us we\u2019ve improved our stoppage game and contest game. We\u2019ve obviously got some issues with defending behind the ball at the moment and scoring against, but there are some signs that we\u2019re actually improving. Don\u2019t take that the wrong way and think we\u2019ve got everything sorted, because we haven\u2019t, and we\u2019ve still got a lot of work to do. But, we think that we\u2019re doing the right stuff with our list and the way we\u2019re coaching this team. It\u2019s going to take some time, but hopefully we\u2019re getting there.<\/p>\n
McQualter defends side after shock loss | 08:06<\/p>\n
DH: Just to back up \u2018Mini\u2019s point… This is going back a long time for me, but year two is always harder than year one. Talking about synergy, we changed six or seven players from our final side that played Fremantle last year, and so we knew that to move forward, we had to take one step back to go two steps forwards. We\u2019re all judged by outcome, and that\u2019s what Andrew\u2019s saying, but the fact of the matter is that there\u2019s a lot of things that go behind the win, if that makes sense. When we look at KPI\u2019s to an inch of its death, and West Coast is doing well in a lot of KPI indicators that we rate. They\u2019ve had some disappointing losses, as he\u2019s stated … they\u2019re on the right path. I know I\u2019m probably sticking up a little bit for Mini here, but I know how hard it is in that second year. It\u2019s harder, and they\u2019re not as far away as what people think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Coast head coach Andrew McQualter has bristled at suggestions West Coast\u2019s rebuild is stalling, labelling a line…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,8406,64,63,55,639,313995,313988,313992,313991,206162,18008,313993,1119,659,10145,313989,61,11233,5332,25541,313994,85,262469,313990,7067],"class_list":["post-648882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-andrew-mcqualter","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-availability-level","tag-contest-game","tag-dark-coma","tag-defensive-intent","tag-disappointing-losses","tag-elliot-yeo","tag-final-side","tag-football-club","tag-footy-world","tag-garry-lyon","tag-gaz-grills","tag-gerard-whateley","tag-list-build","tag-losing-streak","tag-premiership-list","tag-right-path","tag-sports","tag-stoppage-game","tag-wasteful-loss","tag-west-coast-eagles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648882","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=648882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}