WEST Coast is emerging this season as the club most in need of the rebuild turbocharge that pick No.1 represents in 2023 as it approaches the two-year mark of its on-field struggles setting in.

While North Melbourne and Hawthorn endure the early pain of teardown rebuilds, the Eagles are caught in a list transition that has been atypical in many ways, for reasons both in and out of their control.  

But as they prepare to meet Hawthorn at UTAS Stadium on Sunday in a clash that will leave the loser in prime position to snare the prized No.1 pick, the scale of what confronts the Eagles is becoming clear.

The 70-point loss to Gold Coast at Optus Stadium, which included an uncompetitive second quarter, was particularly dispiriting, leaving the 1-8 club just 0.5 per cent ahead of the last-placed Hawks.  

Outside of the Eagles' control this season has been an injury list that has left them with only 26 fit players on multiple occasions. It was a similar story in 2022 and the wretched run has prevented some of the club's best young players from playing and held its rebuild back.

Pick No.9 in last year's NAB AFL Draft, Reuben Ginbey, has been a beacon in his first nine games, but Campbell Chesser (three games), Rhett Bazzo (two), Brady Hough (three) and Elijah Hewitt (three) have not added the same bank of experience so far this season.

Small forward Noah Long has played five games in his debut season and is due to return from a hamstring injury, but midfielder Jai Culley's year has been ended after five games by a serious knee injury.

It is hard to take control of your rebuild when your selection is dictated to purely by availability but, as a result, the Eagles appear behind both North Melbourne and Hawthorn with the development of young talent.

The Hawks, for example, can this week point to the influence young midfielders Jai Newcombe, Josh Ward, Will Day and Cam Mackenzie have had in one of the better stoppage units in the AFL, with Hawthorn ranked No.6 for clearance differential.

North Melbourne, hit with its own injury issues this week, is set to play last year's No.4 AFL Draft pick George Wardlaw alongside pick No.3 Harry Sheezel for the first time.

It is important to at least acknowledge here that the Eagles will not be focused on draft or ladder implications when they face Hawthorn on Sunday.

"I'm not thinking about that," coach Adam Simpson said on Friday night when asked about the unique stakes of the clash. But others will, given the position the rebuilding Eagles find themselves in.

Aspects of the Eagles' rebuild that have been in their control include the aggressive – and since justified – decision to split pick No.2 in last year's draft and add multiple top-end players in Ginbey and Hewitt.

The club has also ramped up its development resources, adding development manager Steve Trewhella and development coach Tom Morrison to its ranks ahead of 2023.

They are the typical actions of a club rebuilding its list and will pay off in the long-run. There are other decisions, however, that have made the early stages of this rebuild different to others.

The Eagles have gone into 2022 and 2023 with a large group of senior players, entering this season with the sixth most experienced list. Hawthorn, by comparison, ranked 18th for experience after shedding senior talent.

List management decisions such as the trade for Tim Kelly are easy to criticise, given the cost at the pointy end the 2019 and 2020 drafts.

But Kelly, 28, has been terrific in 2023 and would be leading the Eagles' best and fairest, while the picks that brought in Luke Edwards and Bazzo were part of subsequent swaps, with both players part of the Eagles' future.

Both have been caught up in the injury crisis of 2022 and 2023 but each has shown their talent at stages, particularly Edwards in six games this season.

Judging the Eagles' young talent is difficult and potentially unfair given the circumstances the club has found itself in, but it is reasonable to conclude that the club faces a bigger mountain to climb than its fellow 2023 battlers.

The club has now lost 32 of its past 35 games, stretching back to round 20, 2021, and a 45-point loss to Collingwood at the MCG that accelerated their late slide out of the top eight that year.

MEDICAL ROOM Check out the full injury list

But this challenging period in the club's history, can be traced back further to round 10, 2021, when the Eagles sat seventh on the ladder with a 6-3 record but won only four more games for the season.

Exactly two years on and they sit with Hawthorn and North Melbourne, contending for pick No.1 and the boost it represents. On the question of who needs it more, the case for West Coast is strong.