Luke Shuey reckons West Coast’s emerging talents will learn a lot from locking horns with Richmond last night.

Searching for a silver lining following the Eagles’ 27-point loss to the Tigers, Shuey felt his charges would be better for the run against the reigning premiers.

West Coast fielded several developing players for the round 14 fixture, including debutant Bailey Williams, Xavier O’Neill (second game), Nic Reid (third game), Jarrod Brander (10th game) and Josh Rotham (10th game).

The dual John Worsfold medallist conceded it was a baptism of fire for the fledglings, but he believed it could benefit them moving forward.

“(Richmond) were outstanding and we probably couldn’t quite go with them for the four quarters,” Shuey said.

“I thought the effort was pretty good by our guys and I’m really proud of the way we fronted up and gave it a crack, but we weren’t good enough against a team that’s probably once again this season the yardstick of the competition.

“It’s disappointing not to get a result, but we’ll move on and bounce back again in five days.  

“We had a lot of young guys playing last night and a lot of guys in their first few games, which is exciting for us as a club and it was really good exposure for them to come up against Richmond.

“You’re not going to get thrown into too much more of a deep end than that. It was a really big learning curve for a lot of our guys, but we probably didn’t handle it as well as we would have liked.”

The media was quick to query Shuey on how the Eagles’ inability to accumulate marks cost the side last night.

West Coast has averaged more than 79 marks in 2020 but only managed to reel in 46 grabs against Richmond at Metricon Stadium.

Shuey didn’t think that was the sole reason for his side’s defeat, but he was sure the team would take a close look at it during today’s game review.

“That wasn’t the reason why we lost,” he said.

“I think when we play well our marks tend to be up, but that wasn’t the sole reason why Richmond beat us last night. They were probably better at the contest than we were for a lot of the night and their pressure probably got to us a little bit as well.

“Personally, I’m not looking too much into the marking stuff.”

West Coast now turns its attention to Tuesday’s clash with Essendon, who recorded a thrilling come from behind victory over Hawthorn yesterday.

The Bombers overturned a 36-point deficit to keep their finals dreams alive, largely thanks to three goals from returning big man Joe Daniher.

Shuey said West Coast would prioritise recovery before preparing themselves to face John Worsfold’s men in five days’ time.

“We’ll have a training run at some stage, but it won’t be anything that we’re used to. It will be nice and light and I’m sure Tuesday will come around pretty quickly,” he said.

“I haven’t seen a second of (the Essendon v Hawthorn) vision, but the scoreline shows that it was a pretty gutsy win. That’s what they’re capable of. They’ve been written off plenty of times this year and copped a lot of criticism, but they’ve got the cattle to play some really good footy and obviously they dug in last night and had a really gutsy win.

“They’re a huge challenge for us in five days.”