SOUTH Adelaide coach Rick Watts admits his side will need to be at its best, and then some in order to knock off the red-hot Woodville-West Torrens Eagles. His Panthers are building quite nicely themselves, having won six on the bounce and are now 7-1 heading into Round 9 of the SANFL Women’s season. However the unbeaten Eagles are on track to break some records.

“I think when you look at it, they have the potential to be the best team this women’s comp’s ever seen and rival the North Adelaide team of 2020 when they went undefeated,” Watts said. “They are playing some amazing footy and we know ‘Rel’ (Narelle Smith, Eagles coach) has been working on that athletic profile.

“I feel like what they’ve done previously, they probably haven’t had the mix of athlete to footballer ratio right. “But now they’ve got that right, they’re an absolute force to be reckoned with and they’d be the fittest team in the competition by a mile and I’d say right now they’re the cleanest and the most skilful.”

That of course is to take nothing away from what his own side has achieved thus far, and while Watts said the typically slow offensive start had caused a few challenges to begin with, he was pleased with where the team was currently.

“Unlike previous seasons, previously it’s been our entries into forward 50 that we’ve had to heavily work on, but this year we’ve been pretty good with that, it’s been our zero to 30 work and our accuracy in making the right decisions and taking the shots from the right areas,” he said. “We’ve started to get that right over the last three or four weeks. Lucy Northcott‘s come into the side which straightens us up a lot as well and we feel we’re playing good footy without playing our best footy.”

South Adelaide currently sits second a win off the rampaging Eagles, but Watts said they were not the only team to be wary of, with North Adelaide now “clearly the third best team” having beaten the Panthers and also challenged the Eagles.

“North Adelaide have improved dramatically and their ball movement is really fast and slick, and really caught us on the hop there and I think we kicked 1.7 and at three quarter time we’d kicked seven behinds and just couldn’t get our offence going,” he said. “But it was a credit to North Adelaide with the way they defended the field and also once they got into offence, they were able to generate three goals from turnover and get out the back really quickly.”

The Panthers get another crack at the Roosters in about a month’s time, but unfortunately for Watts, it will coincide with South Australia’s first national championships match. That means minus the likes of Taya Maxwell, Layla Vizgaudis and Emma Charlton through the midfield and Lily Baxter up forward as a minimum, which will be a “real big challenge” for the Panthers.

Maxwell, Vizgaudis and Charlton have become midfield regulars this season and Watts said their progression into fully fledged ball-winners at the contest has helped ease the burden on star ruck Soriah Moon and veteran onballer Caitlin Couch.

“They’ve all just come in now and those three are all playing heavy minutes in our midfield and as we saw on the weekend, all getting 20-plus possessions, and when that happens and they contribute like that, it takes the load off Soriah and Couchy and others,” he said.

“The highlights package that we’ve had out of those three has been incredible, but the consistency is probably the thing that’s been amazing for us and really shocked us because having those 15 or 16 year-olds, you expect to have some good weeks and some bad weeks, but they’ve been pretty consistent most weeks which is amazing.”

The South Adelaide coach also praised the work of Hope Taylor – another bottom-ager who has impressed at SANFLW and could be in line for a crack with the Crowaeaters – and last week’s debutant Molly Jenkins who found a home rebounding off half-back.

South’s leading goalkicker Shae Archbold is one of the feel-good stories of the season, in her second year back from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury that put a line through her bottom-age year and had ongoing affects during her top-age campaign last year.

“Shae, Lily Baxter, Melissa Anderson, all 17, 18, 19, are all in that same boat where they’re starting to find their feet and starting to show their true potential, but Shae in particular after having that knee injury, we feel that she is just getting back to that consistency,” Watts said.

“I think her aspects that we want her to work on are staying in the contest for a long time and building her engine to eventually play long minutes in the midfield. We know she can score goals and I think she’s scored a goal every game this year which is incredible, but she’s getting three to five minutes in the midfield per quarter and we’re just building her engine up to get her up there, because when she’s around the footy she’s magical.”

From young guns to a “veteran” in 24-year-old Jaslynne Smith, Watts beamed with pride in seeing his reliable defender turn her form around from an uncharacteristically slow start to be in career-best form as it stands.

“She’s just incredible isn’t she?” he said. “I think probably the trial games and Round 1 and 2, she probably struggled a little bit and I spoke to her about her application and where she’s at, and she was probably behind the eight ball a little bit and made a few errors, but from Round 3 onwards, she’s probably playing the best footy of her career.

“I personally think she reads the footy better than anyone defender in the competition and that allows her to play on players that are faster than her and she just reads it and positions herself better. “Not only what she does around the footy, but what she teaches our younger players and the stability she gives them.”

Focusing back on the game at hand over the weekend, Watts said he was looking forward to the challenge of taking on the benchmark side, and was firmly in the underdog camp for the clash.

“They set their wingers up really well, they’re in perfect positions behind the footy similar to what we like to do, and the way they release the footy they just get control of it, go fast and then they’ve got the key forwards up there in (McKenzie) Dowrick, (Klaudia) O’Neill and (Rosette) Zerella who are making it very challenging for opposition teams to match up them.

“We’re under no illusions of how challenging this week’s going to be for us, and we know at the moment they’re the best team in the competition and are beating teams by big margins. We’ve got a lot of respect for them and understand that they’re the best at the moment and we’ll have to bring our best footy just to compete with them on the weekend.”