THE GOOD news for West Coast after Saturday's game against Melbourne is that young defender Beau Wilkes is okay.

But that was about it.

The 22-year-old had been one of his team's best before an incident in the last term that saw him depart the ground on a stretcher in a neck brace, but the club said after the match that he was left with just a sore neck.

Coach John Worsfold –usually one of the most level AFL coaches, win lose or draw – was visibly annoyed after the match, despite a reasonable first term.

"Not just the second quarter, really for the next three quarters we were just terrible," he said.

"Well below what's expected, even with a fairly young side.

"It was not acceptable."

Worsfold said that despite the result against a side that has now won just three games for the year, West Coast was capable of turning itself around in the near future.

"You always learn about your group and your players, and you learn where you really sit," he said.

"We know at time we can play good enough football to challenge teams, but we also know that to be able to do it week-in, week-out over the course of a whole season, we've got to improve in a massive amount of areas.

"I'm still very, very confident that we can do that very quickly. The immediate thing is that we can add in a lot of experience into our side going into next season with an available list.

"That side of it is positive – we're not going to line up with as young a side as we had today many times next year.

"I would not expect that we'll ever have a side as inexperienced as that, certainly not next year, and maybe never."

Worsfold said that the inability to put four quarters together was not a surprise, given the make-up of the team.

"A big part of inconsistency is the youth," he said. "To see young players like (Eric) Mackenzie, Wilkes, (Jamie) McNamara – they all get found out at times, matching up at different times on very, very good players, and they're learning how much further they've got to go to compete like we need them to compete."