Young guns such as exciting ruckman Nic Naitanui will spearhead the Eagles’ pre-season campaign in coming weeks, with Naitanui to perhaps shoulder an extra workload while No.1 big man Dean Cox continues to recover from injury.
Cox suffered an abdominal injury as he worked his way back from a groin complaint something Sumich says is only a minor issue.
Sumich said the four-time All-Australian would resume training in the next fortnight in the hope of playing a later-round NAB Cup match. At this stage, he is in no danger of missing the club’s season-opener against the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba on March 27.
“We probably would only have played Dean in two or three [games before the season] anyway,” Sumich said from training at Subiaco on Monday.
“We’ll probably weigh it up that week prior to the round one game, whether he needs a little bit of a top-up, but other than that he’ll be fine.”
Cox’s absence in coming weeks will open the door for Naitanui and rookie Will Sullivan.
The pair are just two of a number of young Eagles hoping to lay claim to a permanent place in John Worsfold’s team.
West Coast finished 11th in 2009, with injury as well as some indifferent form costing the side.
This year the Eagles’ young list will set about building on what looks a bright future, although Sumich knows it will take time before the list fully matures.
“We’ve got a very young group,” he said. “When these players get around 25 to 35 games then we should be going forward in leaps and bounds, so that’s probably another 12-24 months away.
“I’m not standing here saying we can’t make the eight - we’re striving for that and that’s what one of our goals is.
“There might be some pitfalls along the way with this younger group but we’ll be striving for that.”
Sumich said the Eagles were hoping to put up a good performance in this year’s NAB Cup, but an important component of the pre-season competition would be identifying which youngsters might be ready to tackle senior football.
“It all revolves around round one [of the home and away season]," he said.
“You might see a Brad Sheppard play, those types who might be in contention for round one. So we’ve got to make sure we get at least three NAB Cups into them before we would select them for round one.”
