Eagles look to apply lessons for double header

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The East Perth Eagles learned a lot both from a coaching and playing point of view last Friday but already their focus is firmly on first women's NBL1 West double header of 2026 against Perry Lakes Hawks and Joondalup Wolves.

The Eagles put in a strong showing last Friday night on the road to a Cockburn Cougars team who had won 29 straight up to that point where they were leading much of the night before being overrun in the fourth quarter.

There was a lot for coach Jonelle Morley to take out of that both for her and the coaching staff, and the playing group, and she hopes to start to see some of that put into action for a first double header of the season this coming weekend.

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Now after the lessons learned against the Cougars last Friday, the Eagles will look to implement firstly on the road to the Hawks on Friday night and then before hosting the Wolves at Morley Sport and Recreation Centre where they are out for revenge for the loss back on April 17.

"We've talked about the fact that it's a double a lot and how we're going to manage that as a team," Morley said.

"You can't just go into that without considering the fact that you've got a double and there is some things that we need to do differently as a team in the lead in to that.

"But certainly we're very focused on Friday night's game to start with against Perry Lakes. They're a quality team and we've already played them once this season but there's some changes that they've had in their team, and some changes that we've had in ours.

"Our focus is definitely on Friday night, we need to get that one first before we go into the second game which is obviously against Joondalup and we absolutely owe them one for sure."

Game against Cockburn

Going back to last Friday night on the road to the defending champion Cougars, the Eagles were leading by 11 points at quarter-time and then still by two at half-time and two at three quarter-time.

East Perth did run out of gas in the finish somewhat to end up losing by 10 with Cockburn making it 30 consecutive wins, but for Morley there were plenty of positives to take from the performance as well as a heap of lessons to be learned.

"There's been a lot of dissecting of this game and lots of reflection with both the coaching staff and the team," Morley said.

"I think our game plan was really solid, I think we came out and executed really well and the team worked really hard together both offensively and defensively.

"From our perspective we definitely tired both mentally and physically, it was a really physical game with a lot of physicality and definitely it's something we've reflected on.

"We'll look at how we can manage that better as a coaching staff and a team moving forward, but you've got to grow from those types of experiences and that's what we've tried hard to do already.

"At training we've looked at it from a perspective of what can we do better, what can we do different both critically as a coaching staff on ourselves and definitely from a team perspective as well.

"What made me really proud was how we came out and executed what we had set out to do we proved to ourselves that we've got what it takes to be a top team in this league. But we just need to be able to do that for four quarters, and we didn’t in this instance."

Feeling good about next time facing them

East Perth now won't get a chance to play Cockburn again until Friday July 24 in the last game of the regular season and while Morley will be looking forward to that, it's too far away to think too much about right now.

"I hope so and that will be the aim, and I'm certainly only looking directly to this weekend at the moment but we play Cockburn again in the final game of the season," Morley said.

"So that's a long way away but we did take a lot out of that game, but a lot will change for us by then and a lot will change for them just from a perspective the way we're playing over the next 10 to 12 weeks.

"So for me it's about how we can grow from that as a team for this weekend knowing that if we continue to build as a team then if we hit them again for that last game, hopefully we'll get over them."

Softening them up for the next night

As for the Cougars, they did back up the next night on the road to the Warwick Senators and that saw their 30-game winning streak come to an end as they lost a first NBL1 West game since the 2024 Grand Final.

Morley wasn’t willing to take any sort of credit for softening them up ahead of playing the Senators, but what it did highlight is the importance of home court advantage and the value of finishing the regular season as high as you possibly can to get as many finals matches at home as you can.

"I'm not sure about taking credit, that's a bit of a stretch, but they were pretty tired like we were after our game but Warwick also had a game on Friday night," Morley said.

"Warwick played incredibly well I think on Saturday and some of the shots that were hitting for Cockburn on Friday night definitely didn’t hit on the Saturday night, but they weren’t on their home court.

"Those things often happen when you're not on your home court and we experienced that on Friday night but it's important for us to finish at the top-of-the-table because it just shows how good it is to be on your home court, and to have your home crowd and be playing on your own rings.

"Certainly that was a really solid game on Saturday night and credit to Warwick, they played really hard and had a good win and it was a tough double for Cockburn but also for Warwick over the weekend."