Wednesday WAFL: West Coast could – and should – play their final game in 2021
John Townsend
The West Australian
Wed, 1 September 2021 11:35AM
West Coast’s season-ending match against South Fremantle on Saturday could – and should – be their final game as a WAFL team.
The experiment to field an AFL reserves team in the league has been an abject failure.
It has tarnished West Coast’s brand, compromised the development of the club’s second-tier players and undermined the integrity of the 136-year-old State league.
Should the Bulldogs beat the Eagles by 20 or 25 goals, and that margin is quite feasible given one team is a powerhouse warming up for its premiership defence and the other a reserves team in nature as well as name, it would be an unfortunate but apt end to the current arrangements.
It is mathematically possible for West Coast to avoid the wooden spoon – a 10-goal win over the Bulldogs and Perth’s 10-goal loss to West Perth would do it – but it would mean little even if that miracle did occur.
The bigger issue is what West Coast do to better manage their fringe, development and returning players.
They have three options, none of which is particularly palatable but one of which must become the way of the future.
The reserves model has clearly failed to perform and should be dropped.
Once described by West Coast as the most critical issue on their agenda, the reserves reality has fallen far short of that hyperbole.
As football manager Craig Vozzo said in May after the team had kicked just three goals and been flogged by East Fremantle, player development “definitely has been compromised” under the method which saw a weekly average of 9.2 Eagles play alongside a collection of mostly amateur and reserves fill-ins.
Sure, West Coast flagged recruiting concessions as one way to improve that back-up list but the reality is that they had Will Schofield, Chris Masten, Brady Grey, Fraser McInnes, Andrew Fisher and Cedric Cox on their doorstep and could not convince any of them to walk through the door.
The second option is to find another club interested in an alignment.
The recent East Perth arrangements fizzled out with the Royals cashed up but gutted by a loss of members, supporters and identity.
The Royals have no interest in returning to an alignment while Perth’s hierarchy have shot down suggestions that they are considering a partnership with their Lathlain Park co-tenants.
And a group of influential Demons anticipated a possible alignment several years ago when they drove constitutional changes that give Perth members a veto over such a proposal.
Forget Perth as an alignment partner and forget every other club, all of whom are in better financial shape than when the desperate and broke East Perth agreed to house the Eagles a decade ago.
The only remaining option, and the one that West Coast are adamant they will not accept, is to return to the distribution method that was part of the highly successful WA football landscape when the Eagles won their first three flags and played in their first five grand finals.
Funnily enough, Adelaide and Port Adelaide won three AFL flags between them under an identical SANFL system that maybe, just maybe, actually works.
“That is not our preference,” Vozzo said in May. “We would like them in the one spot one way or another for their growth and development from a performance perspective.”
Yet circumstances indicate that preference might have to make way for pragmatism.
Whether the players are sent back to their original WAFL clubs, with perhaps the interstate recruits housed at Perth as part of a talent equalisation approach, or there is a draft or allocation depending on mutual needs, it appears the be the simplest, cheapest and least invasive method.
West Coast might have to swallow their pride but that surely would be a small price to pay to find a development method that actually works.
WEDNESDAY HERO:
S MINSON PIC DIONE DAVIDSON 6.11.98 STORY JOHN T
Cricket broadcaster Colin Minson at the WACA.
Colin Minson. Credit: DIONE DAVIDSON/WA News
Colin Minson is the radio voice of WA sport and a WAFL stalwart whose time in the game dates back more than 60 years.
It was notable that John Todd, talking last week about his maiden coaching premiership at East Fremantle in 1974, said it was Minson who convinced him to join the club.
Numerous other players, coaches, administrators and media people have their own stories about Minno’s impact on their careers. Minno is now facing a tough health battle but he is doing so with a smile on his face.
Good luck to him.
