WEST Coast has never beaten Fremantle in the NAB AFLW competition.

Sunday's eighth AFLW Western Derby is set to mark a new dawn.

The Eagles are sitting 3-1, having overcome Gold Coast, St Kilda and last year's preliminary final bolter Port Adelaide.

The only game West Coast has dropped was a last-gasp defeat at the hands of Essendon at Windy Hill.

Fremantle is 1-3, albeit with a much tougher start to the year, having made a semi-final last year to West Coast's 13th-placed finish. The Dockers have lost to Brisbane, North Melbourne and Sydney, the latter two arguably being the strongest sides so far this year.

But it's the way West Coast has won its games that's had people sit up and take notice.

The Eagles made a fast start to last year, too, but are playing with far more confidence than their 2024 counterparts.

They kicked 5.2 to 0.1 in the final quarter of their win against the Saints, and produced another barnstorming come-from-behind triumph with 5.0 to 1.3 when facing the Power.

Coach Daisy Pearce brought across Melbourne's former AFLW head of strength and conditioning, Sam Batterson, and doubled the Eagles' full-time resources in the high performance area with just one contract.

With AFLW quarters generally running between 17-20 minutes, five goals in a term is exceptionally quick scoring, let alone doing it on heavy legs in the final quarter of successive games.

"They've done a lot of work on their fitness. The character piece – they've always had that competitiveness, but I think the bit that's growing more and more is their understanding of our process," Pearce said after the Port Adelaide victory.

"When we go three goals down, it's not, 'Oh no, what do we do?' They know what to turn to now, and what to dial up. I think understanding the bits of our game that aren't working, when that happens, and their ability to change it has grown a lot. At no stage did we feel panicked, we knew what we weren't doing well. 

"They've definitely got belief and understanding of the way we want to play. That competition for spots and a deep squad certainly helps, it keeps the healthy competition going. Fremantle will be a big challenge, we haven't beaten them before, and we know what a good team they are. They're strong around the ball, and we look forward to the challenge."

West Coast has traditionally been an underperforming side – Pearce's appointment ahead of 2024 marked the fourth coach in just six seasons – but has finally found some stability, and the young players recruited during the doldrum years are growing up.

Courtney Rowley was best on against Port Adelaide. She's just 21, and missed most of last year with a torn ACL, so is just starting to come into her own.

Co-captains Bella Lewis and Charlie Thomas are both 22, Jess Rentsch (20) has impressed as both an inside midfielder and key back in her second year and draftee Lu Painter already has a Telstra AFLW Rising Star nomination in her back pocket.

Then there's Ella Roberts, who has all the hallmarks of a marquee player, and is bafflingly still only 20 years old, despite having already won more than handful of games off her own boot.

By contrast, Fremantle has battled hard this year, the tough start to its season pulling back the rug on a lack of depth in the squad.

Goals have been hard-fought, compared to the easy, free-flowing style of the Eagles, and concerningly for the Dockers, they've coughed up long runs of opposition goals, which Pearce and West Coast will no doubt look to exploit.

"Certainly polish. We ran over some ground balls, certainly some missed tackles – I think we gave away 10 free kicks to high tackles, so we have to look at that, from a couple of different perspectives, and a bit of technique as well," Fremantle coach Lisa Webb said after the loss to Sydney.

"There is really strong belief, but the confidence comes from putting your body on the line consistently. There's times during the game which were really, really good, then when they got away with four goals, how do we manage that and get back to it? 

"There's no doubt in my mind they'll get up again, as they always do, but it's a bit of a line-in-the-sand moment for us. We want to get back to the football we know, we've got some challenging opponents we've played – and are coming up – and we need to make a real statement this week."

West Coast has just four players (Belinda Smith, Kellie Gibson, Dana Hooker and Emma Swanson, plus the inactive Sophie McDonald) still on its list from that first Western Derby in 2020.

Kate Orme – who was already working for the club's digital team when she was drafted to the Eagles – is still at West Coast HQ as head of content, while Roxy Roux has swapped the purple for the royal blue and yellow.

Fremantle has seven remaining from that 2020 side, as well as a pregnant Ebony Antonio, with wife Kara having graduated to the coaches' box.

Sunday's battle at Fremantle Community Bank Oval marks the first time West Coast will go into a Western Derby as favourites, and there's a very strong chance the Eagles will post that breakthrough victory.

AFLW Western Derby matches