What is ahead for the West Coast Eagles?

The 2018 premiers missed the finals last season with a number of their key players experiencing interrupted campaigns due to injury.

To compound their 2021 downturn, things have taken a turn for the worse early in 2022 with key forward Jack Darling’s future in doubt due to his stance on the AFL’s COVID vaccine mandate.

Add to that another leg injury to captain Luke Shuey and there are some serious concerns for the Eagles, according to Kane Cornes who is worried that their best group of players, now well into their 30s, are beginning to struggle.

“I’m ten out of ten concerned about the Eagles for a number of reasons,” he said on SEN Breakfast.

“(The) Darling (situation), the age of the group, their best players just don’t play. Luke Shuey has played 20 games in the last two years, now he’s done another hammy in the first practice game (match simulation) of the season.

“(Shannon) Hurn’s old, (Josh) Kennedy’s old, (Nic) Naitanui’s old. They’re in real trouble.

“Am I right in saying the Eagles are the team I should be most concerned about?”

Josh Jenkins concurred, indicating that it is a little bit trickier for them to revitalise their list by moving older players on.

“Yeah, they’re concerning,” he said.

“They’ve certainly still got the top-end talent. Whether they’re a year or two gone, who knows?

“They picked up a premiership not long ago, so is this the price you pay for getting a premiership in 2018? Maybe it is.

“The worry that you have with West Coast is who are their highest paid players? (Jeremy) McGovern, Nic Naitanui, (Tim) Kelly, Darling, those guys are Perth-based players and they’re all towards the back-end of their careers. You’d think it’s very unlikely any of them would say, ‘Yeah, I’ll move to Melbourne at this point in my career’.

“Adelaide did it with me, they moved me on, I was being paid well, we want to clear some salary cap space, off you go. West Coast don’t really have that ability because everyone who is paid well his from Perth. They’re going to say, ‘I’m not going anywhere’.”

Cornes concluded: “There’s a lot of pain coming towards the Eagles.”

The Eagles also recently lost 2020 All-Australian Brad Sheppard to retirement due to concussion issues which is another major blow to their list.

Having fallen away last year and with an ageing list in tow, Adam Simpson will need to cleverly re-engineer how the Eagles play in order for them to return to the finals mix this year.