West Coast Eagles coach Andrew McQualter upset by lack of discipline during loss to Geelong Cats

West Coast coach Andrew McQualter has hit out at the Eagles’ lack of discipline, saying he won’t accept players putting themselves in front of the team and declaring Harley Reid let himself down during the loss to Geelong.

The Eagles were vastly more competitive during their 17.20 (122) to 11.10 (76) loss at Norwood Oval but McQualter admitted the Cats “bullied” West Coast with their bigger bodies.

McQualter expressed frustration about the number of goals West Coast conceded through ill discipline. Liam Baker gave away a down field free kick that led to a major in the first term, Reid then gave away a 50m penalty for knocking the ball our of Sam De Koning’s hands and he kicked another goal.

When Josh Lindsay flattened Ollie Henry after he took a mark late in the match, the Eagles had given up three goals through their lack of discipline.

“We let ourselves down today in that part of the game,” McQualter said.

“That was disappointing. It’s something we need to rectify really quickly. We can’t afford to be undisciplined and give away any scores. We’ll get to work on it.”

“Sometimes frustration boils over. Sometimes fatigue comes into it. But ultimately it is a team game and you can’t let your own individual frustrations become a team problem.

“It’s something we don’t want to have in our club and our team. We will speak about it and ensure it doesn’t become a thing.”

McQualter was also upset that Reid conceded a free kick for dropping his knees into Tom Atkins during the final quarter. There was a lot of focus on Reid for some undisciplined acts against Sydney last week and McQualter said the number one draft pick can’t continue to make those mistakes.

“Harley let himself down in that area today and he knows that,” McQualter said.

“That was not the way we want Harley to play. I also thought he had parts of his game that was strong. We’ll keep working with him like we do with all of our players.

“Hes a very good player. A very, very good player. He’s important to us. But we want him to be important to us for the whole time. We want to ensure his discipline doesn’t tip over.”

Reid had been an important player with 22 disposals, six clearances and one goal. Bailey Williams also impressed in the ruck during his first game this season. He had 20 possessions and seven clearances.

West Coast have some concerns over midfielder Deven Robertson after he injured his leg.

But McQualter said Geelong’s experienced stars such as Bailey Smith showed their class after West Coast’s promising start.

“I quite enjoyed that first part of the game. Quite a lot of our metrics looked okay. And then pretty much after that, we got bullied in the contest,” he said.

“They were really efficient. They had 20 scores from stoppage, plus 20 tackles, plus 20-odd contested ball, plus seven or eight contested marks. I think pretty much every sort of contest metric you look at, they got a hold of us as the game went on.”