Former North Melbourne coach Dani Laidley has confirmed her interest in the vacant West Coast AFLW coaching role after Michael Prior resigned from the position last week.
Laidley addressed the rumours on SEN WA, speaking with Tim Gossage and Scott Cummings after the former broke the news last week.
"Yes, that is true. We'd been waiting until the documentary came out because I was contracted to that, so that came out six weeks ago," Laidley said.
"It's been a passion for mine and I've sort of been ready for about 12 months, even for this AFLW season I was asked to do a coaching role at one of the Melbourne teams but I couldn't because I was contracted for the doco.
"Well, West Coast have got a position available so I want to coach again."
However, Laidley didn't want to get ahead of herself, citing that West Coast may potentially run with interim coach Rohan McHugh.
"It's true, it's been a few years now in the making and as I said West Coast are the only club at the moment that don't have a coach for their Women's team. They may possibly go with the interim coach who knows, so let's not put the cart before the horse," she said.
"There may be some clubs in Melbourne as well who make a decision not to go with their coach."
Laidley featured in 52 games for West Coast, before moving to North Melbourne and playing 99 games in the blue and white, including the 1996 Premiership.
Laidley returned to the Eagles this week for the first time since leaving in 1992, addressing the AFLW team ahead of Pride Round this weekend.
"A good friend of mine, Hamish Brayshaw, who's one of the coaches there, organised me to go down and speak to the girls about Pride Week and about the Pride Game," Laidley said.
"I spoke a bit about my journey, a bit about being your authentic self, about acceptance, about inclusion. That's what that was about.
"To look at how far the club has come and the work that they're doing behind closed doors was very overwhelming for me considering I was one of the first people there in 1987."
Laidley would bring 149 games of senior coaching experience to the position, coaching 72 wins, 75 losses and two draws. Prior to that, she was an assistant coach to Mick Malthouse at Collingwood whilst she has also held coaching positions at Port Adelaide, St Kilda and Carlton.
