The West Coast Eagles have started their 2024 campaign in a positive light, with a 1-1 record and encouraging displays from week to week.

Senior coach Daisy Pearce said she’s been impressed with the group’s eagerness to develop and learn.

“I haven’t put a ceiling on where they can get to,” Pearce said.

“I’ve been impressed the whole way along in terms of their willingness to want to learn and improve and work hard.

“The focus points coming out of each game have been different, in terms of what we wanted to go away and work on, and they’re just all great opportunities to learn.

“We’ve got a coaching group and a playing group that take the challenge of ‘this is what we want to go after this week’, and they really buy into it, so if we can just keep putting together weeks like that, we’ll get to where we want to go.”

The Eagles fell to the Bombers by 16 points at Mineral Resources Park last weekend, but Pearce said the team will continue to play their way.

“We were disappointed with the start of the game in particular,” Pearce said.

“We were second to the ball a lot, so it’s just a reminder in this competition that good teams like Essendon will make you pay.

“They defended really well as well, put pressure on our attack, and we made a few errors and got a little bit disconnected.

“We want to be a team that even after mistakes, we keep playing our way and have the mindset that if it was the right decision and the intent was good, we want to keep going after it.”

Week three will see West Coast face the Western Bulldogs on Thursday night at Mission Whitten Oval, and while the Dogs have had some scoreboard struggles, Pearce said they are not to be underestimated.

“They’ve struggled in terms of scoreboard, but it’s a bit deceiving,” Pearce said.

“They’re a team that look like they’re trying to play similar to the way we do, and probably every other team in the competition, in terms of owning field position and territory.

“And while they didn’t put scores on the board last week, we saw a much-improved output from them.

“They’ve had more inside 50s than we’ve been able to generate, they win a lot of clearances through ruck dominance with Alice Edmunds, who’s an All-Australian, and Ellie Blackburn, she’s been an A-Grader in the competition for a long period of time.

“We think that in terms of their work around stoppage and contest and being able to get the ball going forward, they’ve been quite strong, so we’ll be expecting them to be at their best this week.”

The Eagles will now embark on their first away trip of the season, which will be an extended stay over East to cover quick turnarounds and multiple games on the road.

“It was a lighter session today, so normally today’s session would be a little bit bigger, being one of our main sessions, but we backed off a little bit, just in terms of volume.

“But we tried to still set it up around some key focuses, in terms of staying on the same page offensively, and being able to capitalise on opportunities, and still work really hard around the contest.

“That was the focus today, we were probably just out on the track for a little bit less to enable us to get through this next period of time where we will play three games pretty soon after each other.”