AFLW: West Coast Eagle captain Emma Swanson opens up on relationship with coach Daisy Pearce

West Coast captain Emma Swanson has opened up on her relationship with trailblazing coach Daisy Pearce and joked she “didn’t like her” before the former Melbourne star headed west.

Swanson played briefly alongside Pearce in a series of exhibition games before AFLW began. But the Eagles veteran, who began her career at Greater Western Sydney, said it took a while to separate her new coach from the star midfielder that used to hand out beltings to her sides.

Pearce has helped West Coast double their highest-ever wins tally this year in a breakout season that has them still clinging on to finals hopes with two rounds remaining.

Speaking on The West Australian’s Dubya podcast, Swanson admitted it took her a while to stop trying to compete with Pearce, who won a premiership as Demons captain.

“It was awesome to hear that she was coming over to be the head coach,” she said.

“A lot of our girls are quite young, so some of them haven’t even played against Dais, so they have seen Dais as like this role model, which she absolutely is.

“I was sort of at the other end of seeing her as the competition. We have been belted by Melbourne over the last couple of years and it hasn’t been nice.

“You don’t like people who belt you, so I just didn’t like her to be honest. She knows this, we have joked about this before.”

Swanson even said Pearce was taking part in a pre-season swim and the Eagles skipper had to remind herself they were not in competition anymore.

“She has come over and I had to let go of all this competition. In pre-season we did this swim and I am fresh off hip surgery, like all I can do is swim, so I have been swimming a while — I should be alright,” she said.

“I go down and swim with all the girls and Dais comes and she’s ridden like 40 kilometres to get there, jumps in the ocean and me and her — she’s not racing me I’m racing her — and I’m like ‘I must beat her, I must beat her’.

“I was like ‘what am I doing, she’s the head coach, we are actually on the same team now’. She has been awesome.”

Swanson also revealed she wasn’t sure if Pearce, who she said led in a different way to her at Melbourne, would want to stand by the club’s inaugural captain.

That’s after Michael Prior lost his job at the end of last season and the Eagles have churned through coaches.

“I feel like I have been in that situation a few times. We have had four coaches in six years, so it wasn’t a new feeling for me to have a new coach come in, be the existing captain and have thoughts in my head like ‘I don’t know if this coach is going to see me as the right person or if they are going to want something different’,” Swanson said.

“By the fourth time, when Dais came in, I was an expert at it and I just keep trying to be myself. My theory is if you are just authentically yourself, you live as close as you can to the club values and your own values, nothing else can go wrong.

“If you’re the captain you’re the captain and if you’re not, you’re not.

“By the time Dais came in we had already been through three or four coaches and I was just happy to be myself and hope that she understood we are both different people.

“I know she was a highly-successful captain of Melbourne, but we both lead in different ways and that’s OK.”

What did change for the Eagles skipper is her position. Swanson, an accomplished midfielder, has moved to a role across half-back.

She admits it has taken some time to get used to playing the back six and says she “feels like such an amateur” down in defence.

“I’ve dabbled a little bit in the forward line and have so much respect for them because forward of the footy there’s so much you’re relying on to go right to get the ball and to get your opportunity that’s out of your control,” she said.

“But the back line, it’s such a different game back there.

“For six or seven years I’ve played in the mid and a lot of the game is played below your knees, so that’s your craft, week-to-week that’s what your working on.

“When you go back a lot of it’s in the air and I had no idea what I was doing — the positioning of your body, the ball drop, things I’ve never consciously thought of before - I just felt like such an amateur which has been awesome, I’ve loved it.”

The Eagles host Geelong at Mineral Resources Park on Saturday afternoon. They must beat both the Cats and Sydney in next week’s final round to be any chance of making a maiden finals appearance this season.