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gtr: beautifully done; I had completelly forgotten about him; poor Sparks; there was some justice in the end, gtr, Thorne beat Subi off his own boot and the tribunal handed down a deserved long penalty to Miers.

Round 7 1982.At Perth Oval good crowd over 10,000.Subi lead by 5 goals at the first break.And held the lead till time on in the last qtr.And the week before there scenario was almost identical losing at Freo oval .Leading all day and getting beaten in time on in last qtr.Must of been to much for Miers.
Ben Jager was a big man and most would think twice about a blue with him.From memory DM broke 4 of his ribs.

gtr: all true -- no wonder I was traumatised as a child. The full horror of that season can be seen in the first 11 rounds. We lost 7 games by 30 points or less. In one game we led Claremont 7.11 to 5.1 and lost; in another, against Perth, we had kicked 17.3 to three quarter time in a tight match, but lost after kicking a ridiculous 2.12 in the last quarter. Against Old Easts we lost by 45 points, but we had more shots at goal kicking 14.26. In short, against the top sides, CL, SD, we strugglled, but every other game in the first series of the season could have been won had we not played undisciplinned football.

I did not realise he had had a go at the big ruckman from WP. Do you remember the big brawl at Leederville Oval in the same season.

I was just having a look at Subi 82 season.After a solid 81 and colts and ressie in finals expectations must of been quiet high.Very unlucky early and it looks like Armstrong lost the players. Mid season.
Remember that WP V EF match.The late Ken Judge wasn't afraid to get in there.
Back in that time my uncle knew the Jagers.Remember that but can't remember the other players he fixed up.The strong Wafl sides of that era had enforcers on the team.Alexander,Michael.Boucher,Duckworth.And even Mossy if he had to be he proved that.

Definitely a lot of swapping of players mid season during those dark years, remember picking up players like Durnthaler, Alex Hamilton (great pick up) Duda (no impact for such a big name player), Alan Rose (played quite well if I remember) ,Rod Brown, Fotheringham, Tom Floyd from swans, Clint Roberts and another guy from Old Easts who I cant recall his name and we lost some good ones like Randal, Screech, Dimmer, Johns. Marshal. Nothing has changed much except its one way traffic these days..usually is when you are successful

gtr: great post. In regards the 1981-82 period, I think Subi supporters and a few of the pundits thought they we would compete for the four in 1982 on the back of the performance in the preceeding year. However, the problem was that such analysis never too account of the massive player losses, which, made a team that was okay 1981 weak the following year.

The 1981 side would have looke something like this:

Backs: Dwayne Lamb Mitch Fussell Mick Johns

Half Backs Phil Dobson Raymond Reeves Gerry Cotter

Centres Neil Taylor Gary Buckenara Phil Lamb

Half Ford., Graeme Schultz Ken Marshall Peter Thomas

Forwards Clint Brown Peter Munro Brian Taylor

Ruck Jeff Murray William Valli Alex Hamilton

Interchange Vic Melville David Miers

The following year:

Fussell missed the whole year injurred
Reeves played three games because of injury
Buckenara left
Schultz left
Munro left
Hamilton left
Jeff Murray left
Alex Hamilton left
Vic Melville played just one game

In sum, we lost half the side, including the entire ruck division plus nearly every key position player. Those loses, I guess go some way to explaining what happened in 1982, but they don't explain the losing of close games through bad kicking and an inability to play four quarters of football.

The worst one I saw and I cant remember the year but it was down at EF in the Jim Sewell days, Su were 9 goals up at halftime after putting on a clinic in the first half, then Jimmy and the rest of his team mates woke up and closed the gap to 5 goals at 3/4 time, we went on to lose by 3 or 4 and Jim ended up with an even dozen, most of those after halftime.