Waalitj Marawar (West Coast) coach Daisy Pearce has promised to do whatever is required to help her team to improve its scoring during the off-season, but believes patience will be one of the keys to making the team more potent inside 50.

The Eagles’ finals hopes came to an end on Saturday when they lost by 33 points to Geelong, in what was their fourth defeat in a row. Scoring has been a challenge during the last three weeks with the team being held goalless in eight of their 12 quarters.

Geelong key forward Aishling Moloney put on a show for the Cats with six goals in a match winning performance.

The Eagles’ average score has risen from 26.9 points last season to 29.2 points per game this year. Pearce said the young forwards simply need more time to develop.

“I’m really confident that the best footy of our forwards is ahead of them,” Pearce said.

“If you think about Lauren Wakfer and Amy Franklin, they’re 20 and 21-year-old key position players. It’s a bit different in AFLW with the expectation that young people can come in and impact straight away. There’s great examples of that all across the comp.

“The way we’ve moved the ball forward at times, as we improve that and as they continue to get stronger and hone their craft as young key forwards, we are really excited about their futures.

“In terms of adding to the list, like every team whether that be through the draft or trading in, we are going to look for ways to continue to make sure we are improving our list as much as possible.”

While the Eagles have only marginally increased their scoring, they’ve taken steps defensively, conceding 10 points less and the team has also won two more games.

They will finish the season against a Sydney team that is below them on the ladder. Pearce wants her team to maintain an attacking philosophy and not fall into the trap of being worried about their recent results.

She said the Eagles must focus on building a game plan that will help them in future seasons, even if that meant turnovers hurt them on the scoreboard now.

“We got some really good looks off being able to take the ball out on the open side and put speed on the ball,” Pearce said.

“It comes with an element of increased risk that in this phase of where we’re at in building our game style, we have to be prepared to wear some of it. We don’t want to play a really safe game of footy that contains scorelines and makes us competitive, but not a winning team. With the team that we’ve got, we want to be able to challenge and build towards being a real contender.”