WEST Coast has reacted quickly to the news Nic Naitanui will miss most of 2017, bringing forward a scheduled list management meeting as it considers ways to deal with the loss of the star ruckman.
Naitanui, 26, will under go a knee reconstruction on Wednesday afternoon. He will have a traditional hamstring graft to repair the ruptured anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, which he injured in last Friday's win over Hawthorn.
The 12-month recovery process will mean Naitanui is highly unlikely to play much part in West Coast's 2017 season. The Eagles are likely to be ultra-cautious with the 2012 All Australian during his recovery period.
Eagles coach Adam Simpson confirmed on Wednesday that the club had brought forward a scheduled list management meeting by a week to discuss plans for the Eagles' ruck stocks for next year.
"We've got a list management meeting this week," Simpson said.
"We brought it forward by a couple of days, just to get our heads around what's going on. So we'll have to work our way through that.
"We've just got to look at where we're at. We obviously lost Cal Sinclair at the end of (last) year and we're a bit light-on for rucks.
"So I would have thought we need to draft a young, developing ruckman to help back up what we've got already."
The Eagles traded Sinclair to the Sydney Swans in exchange for Lewis Jetta at the end of last season.
Sinclair, 26, played 20 games for the Eagles last year including the Grand Final, and kept developing ruckman Scott Lycett out of the team.
West Coast recruited Jonathan Giles from Essendon, but the 28-year-old has played just two games for the Eagles this season. He played in round 12 when both Naitanui and Lycett were absent, and then again in round 18 against Melbourne.
But despite being available for the other four games Naitanui missed, Giles was not selected as the Eagles experimented with defenders Mitch Brown and Jeremy McGovern as back-up rucks to Lycett.
Simpson said Giles had not been an automatic selection to replace Naitanui because they needed to get the combinations right.
"He's more your No.1 ruck, so that's probably the reason why we've been toying with the second ruck as being a different player," Simpson said.
"Every player is different. Sometimes you just replace a ruck with a ruck, and sometimes it's what can you do to expose and try something a little bit different. We need to scratch that itch a little bit to see what's out there with our list and that's what we're still doing."
Naitanui, Lycett and Giles are the only three players on the Eagles' list over 200cm tall. The next tallest is Fraser McInnes at 197cm. But McInnes, 23, has played just nine games in five seasons on the list after he was drafted with pick no.28 in the 2011 NAB AFL draft.
Simpson said he did not want to discuss any possible trade targets for the Eagles.
West Coast's list manager Adrian Battiston told Channel Nine on the weekend that the Eagles would be negligent not to look at Greater Western Sydney ruckman Rory Lobb. The 23-year-old is contracted to the Giants for next season, but is understood to be open to a move home to Western Australia.
