Pragmatic defender Will Schofield is confident West Coast’s mature playing group will overcome any hurdles thrown their way during the unique 2020 campaign.
With the season resumption seemingly edging closer, many hypothetical scenarios have been mooted to get football underway again.
Pointing to the club’s recent history achieving success, Schofield had no doubt the Eagles would deal with any obstacles as they arose.
“It’s just a moving piece, so I think if you have too strong an opinion on how the border (restriction) stuff was going to work or how hubs were going to work the next day they’re gone and pretty much any thoughts you had have got to move on pretty quickly,” Schofield told SEN.
“Over in the west, and our club specifically, we’re just trying to be flexible and move with the punches a little bit.
“We want to play footy and we’ll do as much as we can to make that happen. We want to obviously stay within the medical and government advice, but we want to play footy.
“I think we’re pretty well placed to travel as a team, we do it the most in the comp.
“If that’s what it takes then we’re happy to. We want to play some games for the fans and for ourselves.
“I’d like to think no matter what happens we can put up with it.
“We’re all big boys. We can handle it.”
While the Eagles players are currently restricted to training in pairs, Schofield believed they would come back in excellent condition when eventually given the green light to train at Mineral Resources Park in the weeks before round two.
"I think we’ll be able to flick the switch pretty quickly," he said.
“The boys have been training in their individual programs since we’ve been off. You won’t have guys who have just been sitting around for six or eight weeks, we’ve been training and we’re just missing that elite edge stuff – that top 10 per cent you miss when you train with a group of elite athletes.
“As soon as that go ahead gets given we can train together again I wouldn’t think it would be too much longer than three or four weeks that we could kick a game straight off.”
A highly-respected teammate throughout his 13 seasons in blue and gold, Schofield said he hadn’t even considered if a shortened 17-round campaign would diminish his chances of playing another 10 matches to reach a significant personal milestone.
“Two hundred games, it’s not really been on the horizon for me. Games is great and ticking them along has been fantastic but especially the back half of my career I’ve just really tried to be a good team man,” he said.
“The games have probably started slimming out a little bit, and that’s OK, we’ve had a great defensive group at West Coast and it’s been difficult to get a game at times.
“If I got to 200 that would be fantastic but it’s certainly not a priority, flags and winning games of footy are mine to be honest.”
