Light day for GF hero as Eagles ramp up pre-season

WEST Coast's Norm Smith medallist Luke Shuey was the latest premiership-winning Eagle held out of main training on Wednesday.

The dynamic midfielder appeared to be favouring his right leg at Lathlain Park and gingerly jogged laps alongside dual Coleman medallist Josh Kennedy and Jamie Cripps (toe) at the start of the session.

Kennedy and Cripps then briefly kicked to each other from a standing start before heading indoors after about an hour, however Shuey didn't join in any skills during the two-hour trackwork.

The Eagles played down concerns over Shuey, and are managing their players during the heaviest training phase of pre-season to date.

Highly rated defender Liam Duggan, who has also been on restricted duties recently, was absent altogether on Wednesday morning after taking part in match simulation on Monday.

Shuey, a beautiful kick on both sides of his body, remained on the track for the entire session and worked one-on-one with second-year onballer Brayden Ainsworth on his ball drop technique and footwork before kicking.

Ainsworth, 20, is yet to join full training coming back from follow-up surgery to correct a problem with his left pinky finger which has affected the Subiaco product's kicking since he was aged 11.

"I can't hold the ball on the side or on the top because of the shape of my finger,” Ainsworth told westcoasteagles.com.au recently.

"I have to hold it underneath, which means sometimes I drop the ball on a bit of an angle and then, obviously, you don't kick as well.

"Sometimes my kicks float up a bit, which isn’t ideal.

"We pretty much fused the end pinky joint. There are some wires in there at the moment, so that’s just fused. Hopefully once that’s all good we will fuse the lower knuckle and it will come out a lot straighter.

"Now that's sorted I'm hoping I can get a bit more punch in my kicks because I’ll be able to drop the ball better."

Coming back from his second knee reconstruction, Nic Naitanui was unsighted on Wednesday morning – when he typically attends a local Ninja Academy gym to work on jumping and landing techniques.

Mature-age ruck Keegan Brooksby and young tall Jarrod Brander were also missing.

Draftee midfielder Xavier O'Neill made a brief appearance during warm-up before returning indoors to continue rehabilitating a knee problem.

The Eagles had 37 players in full training for a non-contact session – including Elliot Yeo (toe), Tom Barrass (foot) and Jeremy McGovern (ribs) – with a large focus on set-shot goalkicking and ball movement.

West Coast will stage an intraclub hit-out next Friday using top-up players from the club's new WAFL team before a first JLT Community Series clash with Geelong on Friday, March 1 at Leederville.