IT’S ALWAYS a good thing to agree with your coach, and probably even better when that coach is Denis Pagan, a veteran of more than 300 games at the helm at the top level and a man who has two premiership medallions at home on the sideboard.

Pagan described the match against West Coast as a learning experience for his young crew, and it was a learning experience in more ways than one for Jordan Russell at Subiaco on Sunday afternoon.

Not only was he opposed to Eagles captain Chris Judd, but Subiaco was saturated by the biggest downpour for a couple of years, which saw water lying on the ground, something unheard of at sandy Subiaco, and it was conditions the young tagger had never played in.

Russell, just 15 games into his AFL career, played a lot of the game on Judd, who has captained a premiership side, won a Brownlow, won a Norm Smith, won two club champion awards and been selected All-Australian twice.

The 20-year-old said it was a thrill just to be opposed to players such as Andrew Embley – also a Norm Smith Medallist - and Judd.

"It is for me, personally, because I've just started out in the tagging, and I've never really played on those high-profile blokes," he said. "It's enjoyable and it's a good experience for me – obviously, it didn't go quite as I would have liked today, and I'm going to learn from that.

"It's daunting but exciting at the same time."

Judd gives opponents a masterclass most times he plays, and he's clearly no less impressive from close-range than he is from the lounge room.

"You see the way he gets the ball, and you know you can't give him half-a-metre otherwise he's going to towel you up, so you do learn a lot, and I'm going to take a lot from that and hopefully put it into practice next week against the Lions," Russell said.

"You sort of look back, you're going for the ball yourself, and you turn it over, and then he's just there out of nowhere.

"It's unbelievable."