Tyson Stenglein Biography

West Coast captain Darren Glass has won the club's 2009 best and fairest award ahead of Shannon Hurn and Mark LeCras on Friday night.

"I want to get back into pre-season," Glass said.

"I've got lots of things I can work on. I want to add to the offensive side of my game and just keep improving.

"There's no doubt this year we were better defensively as a team and I'm pretty confident we'll make improvements on that again."

Teammate Tyson Stenglein took the opportunity to announce his retirement after 102 games for the Eagles at the awards.

Veteran Eagle Tyson Stenglein retires from AFL football.

"I weighed up a lot of options and I decided that that (retirement) is the best option for me and the footy club going forward," Stenglein said.

"I was once told by a wise man, 'The best time to start thinking about retirement is before the boss does'.

"I've had the privilege of playing alongside and against the best footballers in the country and on the biggest stages."

Dean Cox and Tyson Stenglein are named as Eagles vice-captains to recently appointed skipper Darren Glass with Ashley Hansen, Adam Selwood and Matthew Priddis rounding out the West Coast leadership team.

The leadership group was selected based on votes by the Eagles players. Current vice-captain Andrew Embley was elected not to remain in the leadership group.

Eagles coach John Worsfold said that Embley would still provide leadership to the team while not in an official capacity.

"He possesses certain leadership qualities that we may not have included in the ones that we got the players to vote on," Worsfold said of Embley.

"I'll go through with him the areas in the votes where he was lower in our criteria that he could be higher."