West Coast coach John Worsfold has all but conceded Daniel Kerr's AFL season is over, claiming it's not worth the risk to rush the star onballer back.

Kerr's recovery from a torn hamstring in round four has been slower than expected, with the 27-year-old still some weeks away from resuming full training.

St Kilda's Nick Riewoldt and Hawthorn's Josh Gibson suffered similar injuries a week before Kerr and are already back playing.

But with the Eagles sitting in last place on the ladder and no chance of reaching the finals, Worsfold said the major aim for Kerr was to get back to full training rather than playing again this year.

"It's unlikely we'll play him, certainly at AFL level," Worsfold said on Wednesday.

"His aim still is to show he's back ready to play.

"The program is get back doing full training, fully train for three or four weeks to get your conditioning base up and then a player would be available to be considered for selection.

"Then whether we select him or not, I would suggest we wouldn't, but that's not part of it.

"His aim is to train enough to say 'I could play if we all wanted me to'."

Amazingly, West Coast could jump as high as 12th on the table if they defeat Carlton at Subiaco Oval on Saturday night and other results fall their way.

Worsfold said West Coast's 32-point win over Essendon last week, which broke a seven-game losing streak for the Eagles, had lightened the mood at the club.

"It's certainly more fun than losing," he said.

"The players' attitudes have been very steely and very positive throughout this whole season.

"To their credit they've worked extremely hard and haven't got down on anything.

"They haven't dropped away or at any stage looked like they're starting to not enjoy coming to training and trying to improve.

"It was a good reward from them."

And the premiership coach urged his players to continue to back themselves in against the eighth-placed Blues, who have come under intense scrutiny after losing four of their past five matches.

"We've got nothing to lose. We should be going out there and throwing everything at the opposition and if we make mistakes, we're still learning but we'll improve from it," Worsfold said.

"The players showed with their intensity against Essendon and taking those risks, things happen for them.

"We still made mistakes, we still coughed up some poor ball that the opposition scored from, and they're areas we have to keep getting better at because that will cost us if we don't improve.

"We want to keep taking those risks, keep taking the game on and hopefully we'll get the results."

Worsfold said either Adam or Scott Selwood was likely to get the tagging job on Blues skipper Chris Judd, although Brad Ebert was also an option.

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