WEST Coast coach Adam Simpson chose to focus on the positives rather than dwell on the Eagles’ 33-point loss in Narrandera on Saturday.
The Eagles were blown out of the water by a ferocious Giants outfit early on, before they eventually worked their way back into the contest.
A lack of any forward-line presence, combined by some costly mistakes and turnovers, meant West Coast never seriously looked a winning chance.
Simpson though was not concerned about how his inexperienced squad performed.
“We’ll take plenty of positives,” Simpson said.
“We’ve got some work to do but for a young side, we probably got jumped early with pressure and how we handled it...but the second and third quarter we probably had our nose in front.
“At the end of the day, weight of numbers and probably not much up forward to kick to probably hurt us, but we take away some really good positives.”
Simpson said the positives were obvious when you look back to 12 months ago.
“I thought our second and third quarters we won, for a young side to come over here and be three or four goals down before we know it, this time last year we got touched up against Adelaide so I thought they came back pretty well,” he said.
“We kept them goalless in the third quarter, so after the first 10 minutes, it was reasonably even until the last quarter.”
Eagles rookie Frank Watson impressed, while Sharrod Wellingham, Lewis Jetta and Dom Sheed all performed well.
The only significant concern was an ankle injury to Will Schofield.
After only managing five goals as a team for the day, Simpson said that was not an issue.
“Not really, not today,” he said.
“We wanted to expose our kids. We had 30 inside 50s, if we had 60 inside 50s and kick five goals then it’s a forward line problem but we didn’t have a lot up forward today but the supply wasn’t there as well.”
