A “bitterly disappointed” Andrew McQualter is confident he can find clear answers of how his West Coast side can improve from their 87-point drubbing at the hands of Gold Coast.
The Eagles were smashed from the opening bounce until the final siren by the Suns, who claimed their biggest-ever victory 20.16 (136) to 7.7 (49) at Optus Stadium on Sunday.
A despondent McQualter struggled to find many positives for his side as they now have to quickly rebound from the defeat to take on the reigning premiers Brisbane at the Gabba.
“We’re bitterly disappointed. We expected better, unfortunately we didn’t get it right so it’s disappointing,” he said.
“Footy is a pretty simple game. When you go minus 40 in the contest, you’re not going to be able to compete.
“That for us today started at clearance and from there we changed a lot, we tried a lot. We tried personnel, we tried structure – we just couldn’t get that on our terms at any stage so the ball lived in our back half for a lot of the day.”
McQualter said he’d get clarity around exactly they went wrong in the coming days once he rewatches the game.
“The beauty of footy and I’ve seen it for a while is you get opportunity, you go away and watch this tape,” he said.
“I’m confident in a few days I’ll have really clear answers of how we can improve quickly.
“I’ve never watched the tape and not had answers. That’s for all coaches, all coaching groups. You do get clarity in a few days’ time when you review it but clearly, we’ve got some work to do.”
One of the few positives out of the day is All Australian forward Jake Waterman is still a chance to take on the Lions despite being subbed out in the third quarter with a right calf concern.
Waterman did not train on Thursday ahead of the game because of calf tightness, but McQualter said the spearhead was taken out of the game as a precaution.
“He’s ok. It was more precautionary rather than anything else. The game was where it was at that stage,” he said.
“We thought we’d just make a smart decision on that.”
McQualter was unsure about the severity of an undisclosed “awareness” injury for forward-turned-wingman Jack Hutchinson which had him sit out most of the last quarter, while co-captain Liam Duggan was also put on ice with a left ankle injury.
Despite the horror result to start his tenure, Gold Coast coach Damien Hardwick made a point of reassuring Eagles’ fans about McQualter’s ability to lead the team.
“He’s going through the journey that every new coach goes through, what West Coast have got to understand (is) they’ve got an absolute cracker – this kid’s a star,” he said.
“He’s going to be very, very good and the players will get great growth and learnings. He’s that sort of guy.
“They’ll get a hell of a lot better next week as well because they’ll see some things … they challenged us at various stages. That last quarter when they started to run forward and get their game up and going, what they’re going to be, it’s a challenge to defend against.
“You sort of got to take the scoreboard out of it. He’ll get his process this, he’s got a good understanding of that, he’s a wonderful coach, he’ll be fine, they’ll be fine.”