Shuey, who played just his seventh AFL game in round one, has endured a well-documented and seemingly endless string of injuries since he was drafted at the end of 2008.
But finally, after edging North Melbourne by four points in the season opener, the polished 20-year-old was able to take his place in the centre of the circle, singing the team song alongside 18-year-old debutants Jack Darling and Andrew Gaff.
"It was a pretty good feeling," Shuey told westcoasteagles.com.au. "It's a pretty special occasion in anyone's career, and especially given our circumstances it was important to get one under the belt early.
"It wasn't the ideal start to my career, but that's part of footy, I've said that all along, and hopefully all the injuries are behind me now and there's plenty more wins for me in the future."
Shuey grew up in successful sides, playing in two grand finals for school side Marcellin College and winning the 2008 NAB AFL Under-18 Championships with Vic Metro.
But in his time at West Coast the club has won just 13 of 45 games.
Shuey was hopeful the group had turned a corner after Sunday night's win and the club's young players could start building a winning culture.
"I think we're lucky that we've still got guys like Dean Cox and Andrew Embley around, (but) I think we're going to have to build a winning culture because we're a pretty young team," he said.
"We're one of the youngest teams in the comp, so we take a lot of confidence out of that win. Given we lost 'Lecca' (Mark LeCras) And Chris (Masten) early, it was pretty gutsy for the boys to hold on."
Shuey was a prominent player in Sunday night's win, with 20 possessions, six clearances and a composed set-shot goal from beyond 50m that effectively sealed the win.
He said the midfield group went into the match with a clear focus on winning the clearances after some opposition barbs in the build-up.
"North Melbourne said earlier in the week that they saw our midfield as an opportunity to get on top and really beat us in, so it was good to win the clearances and win in that department," he said.
"You certainly take note of that and it gives you a little bit of extra drive to win.
"Winning the clearances was a focus we had going into the game and I think we're starting to work pretty well together in the midfield and get some good chemistry."
Shuey also had six inside 50s on Sunday night (behind only Mark Nicoski's eight) and his willingness to take players on and break lines was a feature.
The 20-year-old was caught on a couple of occasions, but he said it was important that he continued to take calculated risks with the ball in his hands.
"I think one of the most important things is playing instinctive footy," he said.
"It sort of comes naturally to me. I like to take the game on and growing up I loved watching guys like Chris Judd and Daniel Kerr - their natural instinct was to take the game on so I try to drill that into my game as much as I can.
"At this level you can't get away with it as much as you can at juniors, so there's going to be times when you need to give it off and I think it's important that we know the difference.
"(But) you can’t let getting caught have too much of an impact on your game, you've still got to stick to your natural instincts."
