GOLD Coast coach Guy McKenna has warned his players to brace themselves for a fired up West Coast on Saturday afternoon.
The Suns haven't won at Patersons Stadium in five previous attempts but this week will be their best chance to notch their first win in Perth.
The Eagles have registered just one win from their past eight matches and will be without the retired Darren Glass and veteran ruckman Dean Cox
It is the first time since round 15 2006 that West Coast has fielded a team without one of those two players present.
But McKenna warned his players not to take the Eagles lightly given Glass' retirement this week.
"They're going to be on," McKenna said.
"It's going to be a great send-off to a great warrior of the football club.
"(I told the) boys, just brace yourself, it's going to be on. Don't be second-guessing yourself when there's a contest to be won. We've got to win it first before West Coast do. They're going to be hard, we've just got to match them."
McKenna refuses to be fooled by the Eagles' form line.
The former West Coast captain believes they have been competitive in most of their games this year, but their failure to convert forward 50 entries into winning scores has been a major problem.
"They're getting it (inside 50), they just haven't had that ability to score, which as we all know is sort of the last piece of the coaching puzzle," McKenna said.
"Their form line, if you like, is not as good as ours, but I think their confidence within the group will be fairly high to say, 'we're doing most things right, we just can't get it through the big posts'.
"So we can't afford for it to be a shoot-out like it was last year."
The Suns feel comfortable on the wide expanses of Patersons Stadium despite their poor record at the venue.
McKenna made a point of discussing the dangers of allowing the Eagles to break into open space with his group at Friday's training session.
"We just spoke about the length of the ground, Metricon is 165m, Patersons is 175m," McKenna said.
"Certainly there's plenty of space, and again if you let West Coast off the chain they'll expose you."
