WEST Coast picked up a historic win last night, defeating Collingwood by 17 points at Princes Park to record the most amount of wins it ever has in a season, and consecutive wins for the first time in its AFLW history.

Speaking after the match, Eagles coach Daisy Pearce was very happy with how her side’s week-long, two-game trip to Melbourne had gone.

“We called it a business trip,” Pearce said. “Come over here and enjoy connecting and spending time together. The unique opportunity that it presented, but the biggest thing we’re coming to do is go after two wins. So for them to deliver on that, we’re really proud of them.

“Just their ability to work through our first interstate trip of the year, young group on the road for a week, a different week. But they took it all in their stride and then went out and performed tonight, which was the most important thing.”

Pearce said that where the group is at now has been building for a long time.

“They’ve put in a mountain of work, and not just this year, but they’ve been building for a long time,” she said.

“It’s a very young team that sometimes takes time to develop, but I think the biggest thing this year is just the amount of people prepared to kind of put the work in and the consistency of our training has really improved.

“Bringing experienced people in that lift your overall training standard, not waiting until we kind of work out how to compete. It’s something through training and maybe in the past that’s been left up to ‘Swanny’ (Emma Swanson) and Dana Hooker, Kelly Gibson, experienced people driving that.

“Whereas now, we’ve added a few more in around them and it kind of teaches those younger, really talented players how to work. I think that’s probably been the biggest thing, is the gap between those that always train at a really elite standard, and those that are still finding their way in the environment.”

In last night’s game, West Coast overcame a bit of a slow start, but Pearce explained what changed after quarter time and what she said to her group to help turn things around.

“13 seems to be the lucky number, we wait until we’re 13 down to get going, which we’ll work on.” Pearce said.

“I think it was just our pressure and our ability to be first in at the ball. I think we were sort of a bit like Essendon and then Western Bulldogs last season. In the last game, sort of waiting to see what they did before we kind of cracked in at the ball and brought out really high pressure.

“And that was it. That’s what changed, especially mid-quarter. It started happening in the first quarter, and again, that’s another sign of their growth that they’re able to get that done themselves as the quarters playing out.

“But that was the message at quarter time, make sure we’re not sitting off, we’re coming at the game and bringing our pressure, and you can see it instantly at the start of the second quarter that we’d really lifted in that area.”