Dom Sheed says West Coast’s players accept they need to get better across four quarters ahead of a challenge against a dangerous Carlton outfit, led by star midfield duo Patrick Cripps and Sam Walsh.

Alongside dominant ruck Nic Naitanui, Sheed did everything in his power to help the Eagles overcome the loss of gun midfielder Tim Kelly (knee) during Saturday night’s tough defeat to Essendon.

The prolific left-footer racked up a career-best 43 disposals – five more than his previous highest mark – and booted a goal but it wasn’t enough as the Bombers, inspired by Zach Merrett and Darcy Parish, were “tougher for longer” at Optus Stadium.

Without Kelly and skipper Luke Shuey (hamstring), and with Elliot Yeo (groin) still building match conditioning, the Eagles’ engine room will face another stiff test from Blues pair Cripps and Walsh.

“Guns of the competition. We know what they can do and there’s no shying away from that,” Sheed said of the Carlton pair.

“We haven’t started looking into them just yet but I think they played pretty well on the weekend, and Cripps and Walsh were the two that stood up in their midfield.

“We can’t ignore all of their guns around the ground.

“They’ve got some good players in their team and we’ll make sure we do our research.”

Both sides are in the finals hunt, and Carlton (4-7) – which also boasts Coleman Medal leader Harry McKay (38 goals) – pushed sixth-placed Sydney all the way at the SCG on Sunday.

West Coast sits seventh on the ladder with a 6-5 win-loss record after losing several matches from winnable positions this year, with a 3-8 fourth-quarter record proving costly.

“It might come down to concentration,” Sheed said.

“The ‘gut’ part of it is how bad do you want it? Our stats don’t look good in the last quarter, we’re working on that and we’re trying to play a consistent brand of footy for four quarter.

“We haven’t been able to do that this year consistently enough, so we’ll keep working towards that.

“It’s tough to get a gauge on the will to win, how much do you want it, it’s hard to get a gauge on it.

“Contested ball is an easy stat line to look at but I think our boys are hungry and we want to win.

“Maybe other teams wanted it a little bit more than us but we’re going out there, we’re trying our best and we want to win every game we play.

“We let our fans down on the weekend and we let ourselves down. We’ll move on pretty quickly.

“Footy is a hard game, as well all know. It’s hard to get wins, can’t win every week, but we’ve got next week to improve, get better and keep moving forward.”

With Oscar Allen sidelined by concussion and key pillar Jeremy McGovern (knee) out of action a recall could be on the cards for tall defender Harry Edwards, while namesake Luke Edwards and Zane Trew might be in the mix to debut to replace Kelly.

“It would be nice to have a young fella come into the team, it would give us old boys a bit more energy,” Sheed said.

“It’s always good when you have a debutant playing. You get a bit more up and about.

“I’m really not sure what’s going to happen this week in terms of personnel, so we’ll take whoever comes in.

“A couple of soldiers out, we’ll get a few more in and we have no doubt they’ll come in and play a role for us.”

Emerging youngster Xavier O’Neill (24 disposals, 10 inside 50s) also impressed in the WAFL, while experienced onballer Mark Hutchings will also come under consideration following two games back from a series of injury setbacks.

“He’s one of the greats amongst our playing group,” Sheed said of Hutchings.

“We love Hutch and he’s had his fair share of injuries since 2018, and it would be great to see him be able to wear the jumper again.”