After a positive start to the season for West Coast, winning double the amount of games as 2025 within the first three rounds, the results have fallen away across the following five fixtures.
West Coast's loss at home at the weekend against an injury-ravaged Richmond has piled more pressure on the club and its coach Andrew McQualter.
The second year coach featured as part of coaches night on Fox Footy's AFL 360 show on Monday and was questioned on the club's rate of development.
"We have 15 new players on our list," McQualter said on AFL 360. "We have had an incredible amount of turnover in the last two years since I have been at the football club, almost half of our playing group list is new and there is synergy. It takes time for these guys to play together, particularly in our forward line.
"But we feel like we are on the right path and it is going to take some time, but we are doing the right things to build a premiership list."
The loss to Richmond was particularly disheartening for Eagles fans as the Tigers only had three players outside of the travelling squad to choose from due to a long injury list.
McQualter argued that despite the defeat, the game still showed clear improvement for his side from last season when the team only won one game.
"We understand that we were in a position to win a game we didn't win," he said. "I'm not gonna sit here and argue semantics about the age profile of either team because we could do that all day, but everyone understands both sides are young.
"Both us and Richmond are in a similar position. We had a little bit more availability than them but we have some issues in our game that we are trying to work on at the moment.
"I'm not delusional. Because I understand we are still 15th or 16th on the ladder and we have only won two games and we have lost a couple of big games, but we have actually improved our game of football since last year.
"The metrics are all telling us that we have improved our stoppage game, our contest game, we obviously have some issues with defending behind the ball with scores against. But there are some signs that we are actually improving."
Since taking over as Eagles coach at the end of 2024, McQualter has a less than flattering record of 3-28.
McQualter's former coach when he was an assistant at Richmond and now Gold Coast head honcho Damien Hardwick, who was also a guest on the show, offered support for his former confidant.
"Year two, this is going back a long time for me, but year two is always harder than year one," Hardwick said.
"Talking about synergy, we changed six or seven players from our final side that played in Fremantle last year, so we knew that for us to move forward we had to take one step back to go two steps forward.
"We are all judged by outcome and that is what Andrew is saying, but the fact of the matter is there is a lot of things that go behind the winning.
"We look at KPIs to within an inch of its death and West Coast are doing well in a lot of KPIs indicators that we rate.
"I know I am probably sticking up for 'Mini' here, but I know how hard it is in that second year. It's harder, but they are not as far away as people think."
