\n The Eagles opened their 2025 campaign with a 15-point win over the Suns\n <\/p>\n
\n By westcoasteagles.com.au\n <\/p>\n
The West Coast Eagles secured a hard-fought 15-point victory over Gold Coast in an evening clash at Mineral Resources Park, with debutant Lucia Painter lighting up the scoreboard in a standout performance.<\/p>\n
It was a memorable night for the home side, who unveiled three debutants Painter, Kayla Dalgleish and Liz McGrath in front of the Eagles faithful.<\/p>\n
Dalgleish wasted no time making an impact in the midfield, applying pressure and generating turnovers to give West Coast the early ascendancy.<\/p>\n
Ella Roberts opened the scoring five minutes in, slotting truly from the front of the pack, before doubling her tally with a clever dribble kick moments later.<\/p>\n
The Eagles controlled territory and resisted repeated Suns attacks across half-back, heading into quarter time with an 11-point advantage.<\/p>\n
Gold Coast tightened the screws in the second term, with Maddy Brancatisano limiting Roberts\u2019 influence and Charlie Rowbottom dominating around the stoppages.<\/p>\n
While West Coast remained composed in defence, neither side could find the big sticks, leaving the Eagles 10-points clear at the main break.<\/p>\n
The third quarter belonged to Painter, who kicked her first AFLW goal from a set shot after Gold Coast\u2019s Georgia Clayden broke the Suns\u2019 drought.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old followed up with a classy left-foot snap and a strong contested mark to complete her hat-trick, helping West Coast stretch the margin to 23-points heading into the final term.<\/p>\n
Gold Coast threatened a late fightback when Havana Harris struck early in the fourth, but the Eagles\u2019 backline led by the composure of Bella Lewis and Charlie Thomas stood firm.<\/p>\n
Jess Rentsch was relentless with a career-high 12 tackles, helping to lock the ball in and secure a 5.5 (35) to 2.8 (20) victory.<\/p>\n
Roberts finished with a game-high 24 disposals and two goals, while Painter\u2019s three-goal debut will go down as one of the season highlights for the club.<\/p>\n
WEST COAST\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2.1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2.2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5.4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5.5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (35)
GOLD COAST\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a00.2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 0.4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1.7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2.8\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0(20)\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
GOALS\u00a0
West Coast: Painter (3), Roberts (2)
Gold Coast:\u00a0 Clayden, Harris<\/p>\n
BEST\u00a0
West Coast: Roberts, Painter, Lewis, Thomas, Rentsch, Swanson
Gold Coast:\u00a0 Single, Rowbottom, Harris, Brancatisano<\/p>\n
INJURIES
West Coast: Beth Schilling (foot)
Gold Coast:\u00a0Nil<\/p>\n
LATE CHANGES
West Coast: \u00a0Nil
Gold Coast: Nil<\/p>\n
Crowd: 1,453 at Mineral Resources Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Eagles opened their 2025 campaign with a 15-point win over the Suns By westcoasteagles.com.au The West Coast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-67874","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\/67874","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=67874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}