West Coast forward Quinten Lynch is desperate to end his AFL career with a bang, but says the Eagles need to tidy up their game if he is to earn another crack at a premiership.
Lynch, who has notched 189 games for the Eagles since making his debut in 2002, turns 30 next January and predicts he may have as little as one or two more years left in the AFL.
West Coast started their 2012 campaign in impressive fashion, defeating the Western Bulldogs by 49 points at Etihad Stadium.
But Lynch wasn’t totally satisfied with the performance, saying more work needed to be done if the Eagles are to match it with the likes of heavyweights Geelong, Collingwood and Hawthorn at the pointy end of the season.
“As it stands now we’re in the top five or six, but I don’t think we can say we’re true premiership contenders yet,” said Lynch, who booted three goals in West Coast’s 2006 premiership triumph over Sydney.
“We’ve got to tidy up our game and get everything rolling on the one page and hopefully come the next few weeks – it might even take 10 weeks – we can start saying we’re really pushing for a premiership.
“The ultimate goal is to play in another premiership.
“Everyone knows I haven’t got much time left in footy so I’ll be pushing everything out of my body and everything out of this group to get that in the near future.
“We believe our brand of footy is good enough to beat every team in the AFL.”
West Coast are hot favourites to defeat Melbourne in Perth on Saturday after the Demons’ capitulation at the hands of Brisbane last week.
Rookie Demons coach Mark Neeld promised to wield the axe in the wake of the loss, and Lynch said the Eagles were bracing themselves for a fired-up Melbourne unit.
“They copped a bit of stick over there,” Lynch said.
“I still think they’re a good footy side and they’ll come over here and throw everything at us, and that’s a challenge we want.
“We’re expecting them to come out red hot, so hopefully we can meet them head on and wear them down.”
Although Lynch endured a limited pre-season due to a hamstring injury, the 29-year-old still managed to tally 11 marks, 20 disposals and a goal against the Bulldogs.
The hulking forward revealed he was about 4kg lighter than he was five years ago to accommodate a more running game.