West Coast coach Andrew McQualter has explained his decision to manage star Oscar Allen for the Eagles' match against Essendon on Good Friday.
The key forward has had his name spread across news headlines this season as his future at the club weighs in the balance. Off contract at the end of the season, Allen was caught out catching up with Sam Mitchell, who coaches one of the frontrunners in the race to poach Allen's talents at Hawthorn.
While Allen has had to face scrutiny for exploring his value on the free agency market, McQualter said the decision to omit Allen from the team on Friday was purely to balance his workload, with the captain's troublesome knee behind the precautionary management.
"Three games in 13 days. Every team in the competition will have players that can't play all those three games, it is a challenge," McQualter said.
"We made a decision for the longevity of this season that he has a rest this week, and he'll be fine next week.
"He's doing well. His GPS numbers are good, and he's going well. I don't think Oscar's missed a session at all through knee soreness this year.
"We don't get many Friday night games, so that wasn't easy, but we just got the wide lens on it, and I think it was a smart decision by us all."
Ironically, Allen will return to the Eagles' line-up against Hawthorn, but McQualter quashed any concerns about the pressure of the dual.
"Oscar will play next week...We'll just manage it as a normal week," McQualter said.
"We understand the situation, but Oscar is a leader of our footy club, and we'll support him and I'm sure he'll actually be pretty excited to play next week."
The Eagles have slumped to an 0-6 start to the season, although Friday's encounter was their most competitive effort yet.
Falling shy by just two points, McQualter lauded the Eagles' rebound, especially after recording an all-time AFL low 77 contested possessions against Carlton in Gather Round.
"It was clearly a much improved performance, really disappointing not to get a win. I thought we put ourselves in a really winnable position for leading the game for really majority of the game, and even being able to dominate the last quarter, but we just weren't able to score throughout that last quarter," McQualter said.
"...It was certainly a step in the right direction in that space to be able to win contested ball. We spent some time training, but not that much - it is a mindset a lot of the time.
"We just had a little bit better intent. This week, we were a bit more proactive rather than reactive, which I think everyone saw in last week's game.
"To be able to bounce back in that space, it'll put us in a good position to be able to compete every week."
