West Coast club champion Ella Roberts says that first-year coach Daisy Pearce has been “unreal” and thanked the AFLW icon for “taking the risk” in moving west.

The Eagles have enjoyed their most successful season to date under Pearce with Roberts, who took out the club’s top award on Saturday night, putting a large part of their improvement down to the rookie coaches’ appointment.

“It’s a privilege to work under her and she knows so much about the game obviously being in it not too long ago, so she still gets the way it works and she can share her knowledge to those coaches and then they share it to us,” Roberts, 19, told The West Australian.

“So it’s really probably been the biggest thing that’s helped us this year I reckon.”

Roberts admitted it was initially daunting to work alongside one of her childhood idols but that Pearce had more than lived to expectations.

“In my first year of AFLW I versed her and she’s obviously ‘The Daisy Pearce’ so I was a bit star struck and even when she first became our coach I think I was at times still just looking at her in awe,” she said.

“She’s absolutely unreal and everything that I hoped she would be and even more, she’s been great.”

Roberts made a point of thanking Pearce in her acceptance speech for taking the West Coast job at a time when the club was in crisis having won just five games in the previous three seasons combined.

“Moving across the country is no easy decision and I’m sure she would have thought long and hard about it and I think for us we wouldn’t prefer anyone else,” Roberts said.

“I wanted to thank her so much for deciding to do it and follow through with it, because it’s been a privilege to learn under her and she’s obviously still got so much more to give us and I can’t wait for that.

“It’s a risk because it’s the first time she’s ever had a head coaching role, she could have stayed at Geelong and continued doing what she was doing and had a completely different pathway but she chose to give our team a shot and wanted to bring us to success.”

After a career best season only one vote separated Roberts from teammate and close friend Charlie Thomas. After Thomas was named an All-Australian in 2023, Roberts hopes the pair can be named together in this season’s team, to be announced tonight.

“It would be very, very special I don’t think I’ve got too many expectations about it, but it would obviously be an honour especially if I could do it with someone like Charlie,” she said.

“It would be literally a dream come true and a very big pinch yourself moment, I’d love for it to happen but at the same time you’ve kind of got to keep expectations pretty low.”