THE KEY to West Coast breaking a 17-game losing streak on the road is between the ears, according to coach John Worsfold.
The Eagles face bottom-placed Melbourne at the MCG this Saturday in a winnable fixture. But since round 21, 2007 the side hasn't been able to register a win away from Subiaco Oval.
Worsfold has done a lot of research and experimentation in 20 seasons of travelling fortnightly as a player and a coach, and he believes it is a mental issue.
"It can't be physical," Worsfold said.
"The travel side of it you have to take into account, but I would expect that it's more mental than physical.
"When we were a young club we researched what older teams than us had done that have travelled around the world.”
West Coast's last road trip was a disappointing 15-point loss to Richmond at Docklands.
Worsfold said his players were disappointed with their intensity going into the Richmond game and they had addressed it since, dramatically beating Hawthorn by 20 points in round 13.
"Now the idea is to address the ability to back that intensity up two weeks in a row," he said.
"We have to be even more relentless in our preparation to go out and play with the same intensity that we do at home.
"They're things that we always address, whether it's home versus away, or whether it's having lapses in games or quarters – all of those things come into it.”
Worsfold's players, still celebrating their fourth win of the season, were rewarded on Sunday morning with a 6.30am swim at City Beach in driving wind and rain.
It's the sort of field trip reserved for the morning after an unacceptable loss, but Worsfold said the time was right to push one of his quirks onto the team.
"I couldn't have asked for a better day," he said. "It was magnificent. It was the roughest day I've seen down at City Beach.
"I mentioned [after the game] that we'd have a swim and they were looking at me like, 'in the pool?'
"We hadn't done one for a while, so I thought the players were missing it."
