GWS coach Kevin Sheedy has leapt to the defence of marquee signing Israel Folau after the NRL convert failed to get a kick in the opening round of the NAB Cup against Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs.
Folau, who spent last season learning the game in the North East Australian Football League (NEAFL) following his controversial switch from rugby league, appeared well off the pace in both games.
He earned three touches in his side's gritty six-point loss to the Bulldogs before being hooked early in the second half, but failed to get his hands on the Sherrin in the three-point defeat to Collingwood.
However, Sheedy was unperturbed by the 22-year-old's shaky start to life in the AFL.
"He'll learn from that, that's his first game of AFL football really," Sheedy said.
"When you're running around in the NEAFL and playing practice matches, I mean this time last year he hadn't even played, he was still recuperating."
"So he'll work that out but the thing I liked about what he did early in the game is he actually went hunting and that was good."
"Now he needs to build up that aerobic capacity in the midfield to keep the ball in if he doesn't mark it."
Sheedy added: "I think where he is at his stage, he'll play in the next match and we'll just keep playing him until he understands and learns the game."
"I did that with heaps of players at Essendon and those guys had not had a lot of kicks or a lot of touches in the early days but if you find out and you believe in them and they believe in you then it's amazing what you get."
"Guys like Billy Duckworth probably never got a kick in the first six weeks of their career, Kevin Walsh, Dean Wallis and they all played in premierships and played wonderful grand finals and I can tell you now they hardly touched the ball."
"Even the great Gavin Wanganeen hardly got a kick in the forward line when he went to play at Essendon and he had played a lot of footy when he crossed over to Essendon from Port Adelaide."
"But when he went down the back pocket he actually found the ball, so we've got to work all that stuff out with Izzy yet."
Meanwhile, Sheedy praised his young players after they 'competed' manfully on Saturday night.
"We could have (won both games) but we didn't and our players will learn a lot from that," Sheedy said.
"It's basically the first time that we've ever actually played a game where we can tape them ... so it'll be great to get back and edit all the tapes and let all the boys know what they did well and where they can improve."
"We competed. We said we're not going to waste the precious 80 minutes when we get out there and play a game and we competed right up to the siren."
"We had the opportunity to win both games, we had the ball in our hands with 30 seconds to go and could have nailed them both."