West Coast coach Adam Simpson says the club’s latest crop of draftees are showing signs they could be ready for senior football in 2015.

The Eagles added Liam Duggan, Tom Lamb, Jackson Nelson, Damien Cavka and Alec Waterman through the national draft late last year and all five have slotted seamlessly into training at the elite level.

While Simpson was quick to point out there was a lot of work to do before they could think about playing at AFL level, the second year coach was optimistic about the newest batch of Eagles.

“I’m happy with all the guys we’ve drafted to be honest,” he said.

“I think they’ve all got the ability to play senior football this year, which is really pleasing.

“I think you can tell a lot in the first few weeks about how they go about it and their maturity, and I’m pleased with all of them.”

While confident they have the ability to push for senior selection, Simpson says the club wouldn’t sacrifice long-term development for short-term gain with the group.

“We won’t play them if they’re not ready,” Simpson said.

“What I’m seeing is the ability to handle situations already that perhaps a first-year player doesn’t normally handle.

“But it’s a longer term approach, so I won’t be throwing them in the deep end.

“But at the same time if they’re ready to play we’ll play them.”

Now in his second year at the helm of the Eagles, Simpson says the whole squad was training really well and was adjusting to the slight tweaks in the game plan as well as changing trends in the game itself.

Unlike last year, there won’t be major changes to the Eagles style of play in 2015, and Simpson said the aim is to get the basics right in order to push towards a finals berth this season.

“Hopefully it’s just a progression of what we did last year,” he said.

“The game never stays still, I know that. So there’s things that we noticed throughout the season that did change across the AFL.

“We just want to be good at our fundamentals.

“So hopefully the improvement you’ll see with another year with our coaching staff, but doing the basic things well in pressure situations is still the number one priority.”