AFLW 2025: West Coast Eagles coach Daisy Pearce, vice-captain Mikayla Western embracing finals race pressure

With a maiden finals berth on the line, West Coast coach Daisy Pearce has declared she loves the fact her side is under pressure to perform in the last two weeks of the regular season. Off the back of their comprehensive win over fellow finals hopefuls Geelong on Friday, the Eagles sit sixth with two games to play. But in order to secure a first-ever AFLW top-eight finish and clinch a finals spot, West Coast will likely need one more win from their final two fixtures. They play ninth-placed Sydney on Saturday at Henson Park, before returning home to host eighth-placed Carlton in the final game of the season. But ahead of the top-eight acid test, Pearce said her group was not ignoring the enormity of the situation. “In terms of the pressure, what a great position to be in. I love that we’re under pressure at this time in the year, because that means people have expectations of us, and that’s exactly what we want,” she said. “We’re not going to shy away from it, we’re embracing it. It’s a 12-week season, we get to play teams that are vying for a finals spot as well. “We haven’t hidden from the fact that we’re almost in finals. Let’s play the way that finals demand and we’ll either get there and be in really good stead and have great belief that we can compete against good teams, or we will have fallen short giving it our best crack, and we go back to work.” However, Pearce also said they were wary of not putting the cart before the horse in regard to thinking they had already qualified for finals. “We’ve been so focused on improving and our progress within and staying really present with how we go about that,” she said. “I hope we had most of the squad out there thinking about how we nail training today, rather than Sydney and Carlton, rather than finals. That’s our focus, how do we improve and what’s our opportunity right now?” Eagles half-back flanker and vice-captain Mikayla Western said being part of West Coast’s first ever women’s finals group was spurring the players on. “We all want to play finals and that really does motivate us as a group,” Western said. “We’re all very hard workers, and we know that if we just play to our strengths, whether that be individual strengths or team strengths, that’s what’s going to get us there. “It’s definitely a motivator to be that - the first Eagles team to play finals.”