West Coast Eagles taking it one week at a time

THROUGH the course of the season I have often been asked whether we have been surprised by what we achieved this year, especially after locking down a top four spot with our win over the Western Bulldogs on Sunday.

The short answer is no, we haven't been surprised at all.

Within the playing group we have been focused on short-term goals, but we have not set any limits on what we wanted to achieve. And we still won't.

We just wanted to improve on last year and we have obviously done that now.

The first target was to win more games than we did in 2014 and we ticked that box a few weeks ago so that was satisfying.

Now that we have ensured we will finish in the top four, we aim to finish as high as we can because that will help us have the biggest possible impact during the finals series. To do that we will again focus on the short term, tackling each of the last two games, one by one.

The challenges don't get any easier because we now travel to Adelaide to play the Crows at the Adelaide Oval this Sunday and they will be looking to lock down a spot in the finals by winning this game.

They have a gun midfield, through the likes of Patty Dangerfield, Rory Sloane and co and also have some firepower up front with Tex Walker and Eddie Betts, so we know it's going to be tough, but we're ready for it.

We will be looking to celebrate the 150-game milestone of my good mate Mark LeCras in style. Lecca will earn life membership as a result of hitting that mark and I can't think of anyone more deserving. We have played a lot of footy together over the years and it would be great to win to mark the occasion.

We don't use milestones as an extra motivator because we want to reach a level every week as a team, so we will look to produce our best. During the week we will watch a highlights package featuring Lecca and that will be fun.

That comes a week after another of the forwards enjoyed a big milestone with Jack Darling notching up a ton in the game against the Bulldogs.

With just two games to the finals, we will be looking to build some momentum before hitting the September action running.