West Coast coach Andrew McQualter said the Eagles will be doing everything they can to spoil Scott Pendlebury’s party, urging his side to embrace the occasion.

The Eagles, who have adopted the name Waalitj Marawar for Sir Doug Nicholls Round, will take on Collingwood with Pendlebury set to break the all-time AFL games played record on Saturday.

Pendlebury will wear a special gold No.10 guernsey with the Pies and the AFL pulling out all the stops to celebrate the champion.

But McQualter said it’s not the Eagles’ role to just play along with the fanfare.

“My job is to win the game, so I’ll do whatever it takes. We’re acknowledging it’s an amazing achievement, but we’re not there to celebrate Scott and his day,” he said on The Agenda Setters.

“We’re there to win the game of football and do everything we can to improve.”

Collingwood has carefully managed Pendlebury this season, with some accusing the club of being disrespectful in handpicking the battling Eagles to be his opponent to ensure he can celebrate his milestone with a victory.

However, McQualter said they have plenty of motivation from within the club as they continue to rebuild from their lowest ebb.

“We’re not motivated by external factors, we’ve got so much room we need to improve as a team, I understand, around the commentary that he was rested last week,” he said.

“But for us, it’s just another opportunity we played pretty well on the weekend, and it’s a chance for us to build on our game.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for our guys to play in front of a massive crowd, it’s a finals-like crowd, and a lot of our players haven’t played in that type of game, so we’re looking forward to it.”

The Eagles have had an up-and-down season, with the gap from their best to worst still immense, with their three wins sitting alongside two 100-point beltings and a dispiriting home loss to an injury-ravaged Richmond side.

That is in part due to West Coast being comfortably the youngest team out on the park each week, with McQualter saying the Eagles’ lengthy rebuild is entering a new phase.

“We’ve clearly been through a whole transformation of our list, particularly in the last two years and targeted the draft and got some great talent through the door,” he said.

“But we can’t go any younger from here on in, we’re as young as we can be, and now it’s about building this team up to become a premiership team

“We’ve got an unbelievable alignment through a whole club about where we’re at, and that’s where my focus lies.”

To that end, two big targets could be Lachie Neale, who is out of contract at the end of this year, and Chad Warner, who revealed he was close to returning to WA before re-signing with Sydney last year.

“We‘re absolutely in the market for anyone who we think can make our team better, so free agents, yes, draft, yes, trade, yes,” he said.

“Particularly guys that can come straight in to help our young players develop and learn the habits required to become an elite AFL player.

“We’re really open to any avenue we can use to make our team more competitive and start competing for finals and ultimately win the premiership.”