THERE IS one thing about Andrew McQualter’s game style at West Coast that the new coach is certain about: regardless of how the Eagles start 2025, they’ll end the year playing differently.
After 11 seasons under premiership coach Adam Simpson, there is intrigue around how the Eagles will attack this year under a new coach with his own fresh ideas and a decade at Richmond through three premierships.
Distilling McQualter’s gameplan into three words is not easy, but ‘compete, rounded and territory’ might do the job for now as the Eagles prepare to launch a new era against Gold Coast at Optus Stadium on March 16.
“If we can get those phases right more often than not, we’ll be a team that will put ourselves in most games,” McQualter told AFL.com.au.
“Ultimately, we want to be able to be a team that can compete really hard in every phase of the game, but you have to be really rounded to be a great team.
“You can’t just be good in offence or good in defence or good in the contest, you need to be rounded, so I see the game as all those phases complementing each other … and you’re going to see us be a team that looks to play the game in the front half.
“What I’ve learned is every season I’ve been at a club we’ve ended the season playing a different way to the way we started. So there’s parts that just need to evolve.
“The beauty of a style or gameplan, whatever you want to call it, is they’re ever evolving. It’s not like this has a full stop on it at any time.”
McQualter has had limited time to embed a new game style at West Coast, but the team is as ready as it could be to start the season under a new system.
To get to this point, the coach said he broke down the different elements of his game style during an education phase pre-Christmas before bringing them all together on the training track across the past two months.
“There’s multiple ways people learn, and we just tried to get to all of those touch points lots of times.
Andrew McQualter addresses the players during West Coast’s training session at Mineral Resources Park on February 12, 2025. Picture: West Coast FC“It’s the type of thing though that ultimately the players need to feel it in high pressure games, in high pressure situations, against opposition that aren’t us. So that’ll be part of our evolution as well.”
McQualter took in a lot of vision of the Eagles during the coaching application process last year, but he hasn’t wanted to look back since boarding a flight from Melbourne to Perth in late September last year.
The extent of change at West Coast, with premiership players Tom Barrass and Jack Darling among 11 departures, means a new era is well and truly upon the club.
Judging success in 2025 will be more complex than simply targeting a set number of wins, but it is clear to McQualter that improvement is needed after 10 wins across the past three seasons, including five last year.
“The easy one in our industry is win-loss, but for every successful team I’ve been involved in, it’s all about the journey,” he said.
