After fighting tooth and nail to secure a two-point victory against St Kilda in round five, West Coast were looking to back it up against Collingwood on Sunday, but fell short after the Magpies managed to boot four goals in the third quarter and hand themselves a 29-point lead.

But in the moments leading up to Collingwood’s purple patch, West Coast looked dangerous, with Niamh Kelly snapping the Eagles’ first goal of the match early in the term, and Aimee Schmidt kicking a minor.

However, it’s the team’s first quarter senior coach Michael Prior is looking at focussing on this week at training, with the Eagles being held goalless in the first term in five out of their six matches this season.

“I think in our first quarter, we just looked at numbers then, it was stark, the first half compared to the second half,” Prior said.

“Poor starts in games get you nowhere, and then the sides that are coming across like Collingwood, who play a good brand of footy, really hurt us.

“But pleasing to get some things going our way, on our terms a little bit in the second half, but I think the damage had already been done.

“Scoring is the aim of the game and if we can’t hit the scoreboard, particularly at the early in the game if you put a bit of scoreboard on the opposition it really hurts.

“So we’ll review, look at ways we can get better and score more, but obviously poor starts have really cost us in games.”

The team was also swamped in inside 50 entries in the first quarter, with three compared to Collingwood’s 18, and in total, 23 entries to the Magpies’ 40.

However, Prior said the team’s defenders weren’t to blame, holding Collingwood to an inside 50 efficiency rate of just 35 per cent.

“I thought our defenders, that’s not why we lost the game today, I thought they defended really well,” Prior said.

“Defended 40 entries and I think they had a scoring percentage of around 35, which I thought was really good going from a defensive point-of-view.

“I looked at our contested ball numbers at the end of the game and again it was that first half.

“We were slightly up in the second half, if you break it down into two halves, but again it’s the start in the game.

“In the first half it cost us in that stat, so we got going after half-time, but games aren’t won on a quarter or a half.

“We need to do that for four quarters and we just can’t do that at the moment.”

West Coast had an inside 50 efficiency rate of 39.1 per cent as well as seven marks inside 50 compared to the Magpies’ five, but the forwards need more supply to truly make an impact, according to Prior.

“I think we took seven marks inside forward 50, we took more marks in our forward 50 than Collingwood did,” he said.

“We had half the entries, so I think from that regard it worked for us.

“When we got the ball in a little bit, we were able to hit the scoreboard, and we’re really going for that pressure, that for us has been pretty good in the last three weeks.

“So I think it’s slightly down today in terms of tackles, but obviously got to get the ball in there a little bit more to give our forwards an opportunity.

“Hopefully there’s signs we are improving, and the gap is closing on those better sides.

“But we’ve still got a lot of work to do and that’s what we’re striving for, that improvement.”