A number of young Eagles held their own in the intra-club match, but it was Daniel Kerr, Dean Cox and Ash Hansen – who booted four goals – who stood out.
Kerr and Cox formed an unstoppable centre-square combination for the first half before the feisty on-baller was rested. The impressive performance leaves Kerr in calculations for the NAB Cup opener against Collingwood in eight days time.
"He (Kerr) just hasn't had any setbacks, I think that's the key thing," Eagles' coach John Worsfold said after the session. "He's just ready to go now [and] he's feeling fit.
"The gap between the NAB Cup games [means] he can have a good hit-out this early in the year knowing that he gets a two- or three-week break."
Key midfielders Sam Butler and Chris Masten were also prolific in the early stages of the match and both appeared to have had solid summers in the weights room. However neither returned from the half-time break.
Tom Swift was the only NAB AFL Draft pick on display and put in a mostly polished performance covering plenty of ground. Lewis Stevenson was the best of the rookie-listed players.
Adam Hunter, Andrew Embley, Matt Rosa, Beau Waters and Tyson Stenglein were notable absentees from the senior group, while exciting youngsters Brad Ebert, Scott Selwood, Josh Kennedy and Mitch Brown were also rested.
After a wretched run with injury in 2008, there were plenty of encouraging signs for West Coast with the familiar dash of Mark Nicoski and Shannon Hurn on display across half-back.
Brett Jones' four-quarter effort on Ben McKinley [two goals] was also a positive but Worsfold said match-ups and game-plans were not relevant this early in the pre-season.
"Today there was no real instruction about how we wanted to go about it," he said.
"We just wanted to get into the mode of playing footy, tackling, being in close and getting a lot of body-work.
"The way we moved the ball really wasn't an issue for us today. The basic message to the players was: 'You've got four lots of 20 minutes to really run hard, get a lot of fitness work and prepare yourself for next week'."
