WEST Coast will dig deeper into the management of captain Luke Shuey after the Norm Smith medallist suffered another hamstring injury in his return match on Saturday night.
Shuey returned 22 days after his most recent hamstring setback to star against the Power at Optus Stadium before the shattered midfielder headed to the bench injured in the last 10 minutes of the match.
Coach Adam Simpson said the Eagles would do everything possible to repair their skipper, who suffered hamstring injuries on two separate occasions last season, including a double hamstring strain in September.
"We’ve just got to dig a bit deeper, but I'm not sure how much we can dig. We’ve dug pretty deep," the coach said.
"That was the sour part of the night I suppose, so really feel for him. I think it’s something he’s done before, which feels like it’s going to be a standard 21-dayer.
"We’ve tried every different program under the sun so we’ll just keep going back to the drawing board until we get it right."
Shuey was arguably best afield in his return game, winning 28 disposals and eight clearances to lead a midfield that dominated the Power, both at stoppages and around the ground.
Simpson said the injury was a tough blow for the 30-year-old, whose summer was interrupted by calf injuries before a hamstring strain on the eve of the season.
“It's tough. Injuries happen and you’ve got to be pretty resilient in this competition," the coach said.
"But when you have a continual issue, and you couldn’t be any more professional … it’s tough on him and we’ve just got to put our arms around him."
EAGLES v POWER Full match coverage and stats
Simpson said he was happy for fellow midfielder Andrew Gaff, who bounced back to form with a game-high 36 disposals.
The coach said nothing had changed with the wingman's role after a slow start to the season that netted 16 possessions in each of his first two matches.
"We did nothing, he just played his normal role," Simpson said.
"People come up and down in form a little bit … but it’s been two games. I just let him do his thing. It wasn’t really anything from an instructional point of view."
Simpson said the Eagles "executed the style that we wanted" really well on Saturday night, controlling possession in the first half with pin-point ball-use and slowing the game down to take away Port's speed.
They also won the contested ball convincingly in the first half, with Power coach Ken Hinkley disappointed that his team didn't "bring the hunt" from the first bounce, leaving it until the second half to compete.
"We were beaten really badly around the contest in all areas around the ground, not just one area," Hinkley said.
"We got some contest back into our game, credit to our blokes at least. They stuck at it … but we didn’t bring the hunt we wanted right at the start.
"We made fundamental poor skill errors too, which you pay the price for against great teams."
Port face Richmond next Friday night at Adelaide Oval and Hinkley welcomed the challenge of rebounding against the back-to-back premier.
"Last year we had two cracking games against them and I reckon it'll be something similar next week," he said.
"It'll be a packed house at Adelaide Oval and we'll need our absolute best around contest.
"If we don't deliver that, the same thing is going to happen.
"There's no bigger game that you want to play well in and test yourself in. We failed tonight. We don't want to fail twice."
Hinkey said he wanted to see more of Mitch Georgiades and Todd Marshall in the same forward line after the pair combine for five goals, while spearhead Charlie Dixon was held goalless.
