\n Daisy Pearce says the Eagles are focused on strengthening their team defence ahead of Saturday’s clash with Kuwarna\n <\/p>\n
\n By westcoasteagles.com.au\n <\/p>\n
Waalitj Marawar are determined to return to the defensive foundations that drove the club’s rise last season as they prepare to face Kuwarna in Saturday’s round three clash.<\/p>\n
Pearce said the Eagles have taken valuable learnings from the opening rounds and spent the week reinforcing their team defence ahead of Saturday’s match.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got to get back to defending as a team,” Pearce said.<\/p>\n
“We were pretty disappointed in our performance. It feels like a bit of everything, but stripping it back, defending as a team is the main thing.<\/p>\n
“Working as a group of 16 to defend rather than trying to defend on our own will make a lot of aspects of our game look better.”<\/p>\n
Pearce said the Eagles may have become too focused on individual matchups rather than protecting dangerous space and supporting one another around the contest.<\/p>\n
Despite the club’s 0-2 start, Pearce said the focus remains on improvement rather than dwelling on results.<\/p>\n
“We want to win every week, but at the end of the day we want to turn up this weekend and improve on our performance from last week,” Pearce said.<\/p>\n
“If we do that, the outcome will look after itself.”<\/p>\n
Senior player Emma Swanson said the group’s mindset has remained positive throughout the week.<\/p>\n
“As an older player you come in and get after what we’ve reviewed and try and train hard and set the tone that way,” Swanson said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got such a good group. A lot of the young girls are the ones leading and we’re along for the ride as well.<\/p>\n
“The energy is really good and our focus is just on training hard.”<\/p>\n
Swanson said the players remain committed to a process-driven approach despite the pressures of the short AFLW season.<\/p>\n
“We don’t talk about the scoreboard, we don’t talk about wins and losses, we really just talk about what we can do to get better,” Swanson said.<\/p>\n
The Eagles also receive a boost with Charlie Thomas returning to training after illness ruled her out of last weekend’s clash against Gold Coast.<\/p>\n
“It’s great to have Charlie back out on the track today,” Pearce said.<\/p>\n
Kuwarna presents another significant challenge for Waalitj Marawar, with Pearce expecting the Crows’ trademark toughness and midfield strength to test her side.<\/p>\n
“They’re always a tough opposition to play,” Pearce said.<\/p>\n
“They’re playing the Adelaide way, which is tough and competitive, and they work hard.”<\/p>\n
Pearce noted the expectations surrounding the Eagles reflected the growth and progress the program has made in recent seasons.<\/p>\n
“It says that the footy world has started to have expectations of us as a program and as a team,\u201d Pearce said.<\/p>\n
“I’m really confident in this team. We’ve got a lot of belief in the playing group and our staff that we’ve got the right people to get after it and dig ourselves out of it pretty quickly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daisy Pearce says the Eagles are focused on strengthening their team defence ahead of Saturday’s clash with Kuwarna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-868967","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\/868967","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=868967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}