\n Excitement is building as the Eagles take on the Gold Coast Suns in their AFLW season opener\n <\/p>\n
\n By westcoasteagles.com.au\n <\/p>\n
The West Coast Eagles are ready to launch their 2025 AFLW campaign tomorrow night against Gold Coast Suns, with the season-opener now set for Mineral Resources Park following a late venue change.<\/p>\n
Senior coach Daisy Pearce said the shift from Leederville Oval was a smooth transition for the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe train and play here anyway, so nothing much changes,\u201d Pearce said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll crack in and look forward to seeing as many people here as possible. It\u2019s only 15 minutes down the road so just make sure you come to Mineral Resources Park, and not Leederville!\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-captains Charlie Thomas and Bella Lewis will lead the team out together for the first time, with Lewis returning from an ankle injury that kept her sidelined throughout the pre-season.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s been an absolute professional in her rehab and will be ready to attack it,\u201d Pearce confirmed.<\/p>\n
Thomas said it was \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d heading into her first season as skipper alongside Lewis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a massive honour to be named captain alongside Bella, but we got voted in for a reason, so I don\u2019t feel like I have to change too much,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that we\u2019re in-season, we\u2019ve played our role up until this point, now we just get to play footy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old defender said having Lewis back on field would provide an important boost.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love playing with Bella,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s had a tough pre-season, but she\u2019s worked extremely hard to get back. From a positional point of view, it\u2019s great to have her voice in the midfield and forward, while I\u2019ll be down back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three players will pull on the Eagles guernsey for the first time, ruck Liz McGrath, midfielder-forward Lucia Painter, and small forward Kayla Dalglish, each impressing through the pre-season.<\/p>\n
Pearce praised their competitiveness, athleticism and football smarts, noting all three had \u201cearned the right\u201d to play.<\/p>\n
Pearce said the squad had narrowed its focus over the off-season, targeting fundamentals under pressure and team defence to match the continually improving standard of the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to play to win, execute our game style, and give ourselves an opportunity every week,\u201d Pearce said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe competition just gets better every season, and we can\u2019t wait to see where we sit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bouncedown against the Suns is 7:15pm Thursday night, watch live on 7mate, Fox Footy and Kayo.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Excitement is building as the Eagles take on the Gold Coast Suns in their AFLW season opener By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-65620","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","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65620","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=65620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}