A year on from their AFLW finals appetiser, West Coast Eagles are hungry for a second bite at the apple in 2026, and coach Daisy Pearce believes there is a recipe to move them up the food chain.

Despite last season’s first finals berth warranting a tougher schedule in 2026, Pearce said internal focus rather than furtive glances at opponents will be their ‘modus operandi’ as they look to build on the club’s best women’s season.

In her second season on the hot seat, Pearce helped the Eagles crack the AFLW top eight for the first time in their history after laying the foundations for the finals tilt in 2024, when her side showed promise but could not convert it into wins.

Having focused heavily on effort and making themselves a hard-to-beat team across the first two years of her tenure, Pearce said the focus was now on adding a different dimension to their game by improving their stoppage work.

“We’ve been proud over the last couple of years of how we’ve improved our contest work and our defence. They were real focuses the first two seasons I was here, and we made some good improvement on our defence last year,” she said.

“It helped us climb up the ladder and be competitive in more games and as we’ve built that, trying to find ways to make the opposition defend a little bit more has been a focus, alongside trying to improve some of our stoppage work.

“We’ve got a young midfield group, but a really talented one. We’ve really gone to work in that part of the game, so we’re not conceding territory as often as we were last year.”

With territory and tilting the field in one’s favour as vital as ever in the league, West Coast’s poor stoppage numbers last year hardly helped their cause.

The Eagles were the only club aside from 15th-placed Collingwood to have just one player average more than three clearances per game (Ella Roberts with 3.8).

In their pre-season defeat to Collingwood, six West Coast players had at least three clearances, although Pearce said even with an increased focus on the stoppage game, their fundamentals needed to be strong.

“The practice matches were a good reminder that you can improve those parts of your game, but don’t skip the first couple of steps in needing to constantly invest in our contest and our effort in defence,” Pearce said.

“It was good to get that reminder and get a chance to practice and really dial in on that over the last couple of weeks, but a big focus for us has been how we move the ball, our skills to be able to do that and some of our understandings of our roles structurally, to set the game up how we want to look.”

West Coast played just four top eight sides last year en route to their eighth-placed finish. This season, they will play five plus the three teams who finished on the same number of points as them last season but missed out on the finals due to percentage (Sydney, Port Adelaide and Fremantle).

But despite the tougher fixture, Pearce said her side just needed to turn up every day and try to improve.

“Regardless of the fixture you get, the competition develops and changes so much year on year that it’s all out of your control, who you face and who’s in week to week,” she said.

“Our job is to come in here and try and get as good as we can, as quickly as we can and not miss an opportunity.

“That’s always a focus of us, no matter who we’re playing and what fixture we’re getting so if you get that right and focus on your own improvement, you and your results and who you end up playing and where you finish at the end, sort of look after themselves.”

It comes as the Eagles named five new names for their round one clash with draftees Mia Russo and Jovie Skewes-Clinton to be joined by club debutants Ella Slocombe, Keeley Skepper and Isabella Shannon.

Russo was the club’s top draft pick, with the former Falcon a highly rated on-baller who can also move forward to help out in attack.

“She’s a natural footballer and someone who grows a bit taller when she steps on the field, never taking a backward step, no matter her opponent,” Pearce said.