Eagles young gun Reuben Ginbey says he is ready to step up and take on Geelong’s forward line in absence of two Eagles star defenders.
Jeremy McGovern was ruled out of Saturday’s clash at GMHBA Stadium against the Cats on Tuesday after going under the knife to fix a lingering thumb injury.
He joins fellow key defender Tom Barrass, who is rumoured to have played his last game for West Coast, on the bench. Barrass has been hampered by back and hamstring issues after entering concussion protocol following the round 20 derby.
With the backline down two soldiers, Ginbey told SportFM he’s ready to fill in their shoes, along with young key defender Harry Edwards.
“That’d be a good challenge again, I guess I was playing key for a few weeks, like the Gold Coast game and the North game I was playing on Brynn Teakle, he’s probably got a good 15 centimetres on me,”
“I like the challenge and Harry (Edwards) has definitely shown what he can do. I love playing with him, he plays super aggressive and attacks the footy hard.
“I guess it’s a bit young and maybe undersized, but we’ll try our hardest to get it done.”
Edwards and lockdown defender Brady Hough each recommitted to West Coast after signing three-year contract extension with the club.
For Edwards, it was recognition for his commitment to six year at the club developing – which has been on show in the last few rounds of the season.
At 21 with 52 games under his belt, Hough has quickly become regarded one of the league’s top lockdown defenders after shutting down some of the AFL’s biggest names up forward.
Ginbey had high praise for Hough and has backed him in to possibly match up on star forward Jeremy Cameron this weekend.
“I think it’d be good. There’s a match-up that Hough could maybe run with,” he said.
“He’s done a super good in his role where we’ve seen Hough running with similar sizes and running ability. Whoever gets that match-up will definitely get a good challenge.
“He’s a superstar (Cameron), and I guess what he does well is he gets up the ground, but he also comes back to goals and can take marks as well, so whoever gets that man will have a big challenge ahead of him.”
The Eagles appeared to find some late season form, winning two on the trot against Gold Coast and North Melbourne before slumping to Carlton by 65 points last weekend.
Looking ahead to next season, Ginbey says finding consistency and building with a new coach, possibly caretaker coach Jarrad Schofield, is something he looks forward to.
“I think we’ve chatted about this a few times, but just the consistency between home and away, but also just out form throughout the whole year,” he said.
“With the younger team we’ve had, it’s hard to build performances and I think we showed that we can. We won two games in a row and it really felt like we were building something and then unfortunately we didn’t have a good performance on the weekend.
“I think just that consistency and also late in the season, battered bodies, that kind of thing, but that’s definitely no excuse.
“I’m looking forward to the next season, we’ll get a new coach. We’ve all loved Schoey for the last few months, if its him that would be great and can’t wait to really build with this group we’ve got going forward.”
IMAGE: AFL Photos