TOPIC:

gtrxuone wrote:

Beasley Hutton wrote: Ch7 commentator John Rogers was rather uncomplimentary towards Simon Beasley in the GF.
Granted he didnt have a good game kicking only 2 goals but he was into him from the get go which was rather tough considering he had kicked 6 goals in the 2nd Semi & 7 goals in the Preliminary Final and 97 majors during the season in what was his breakout year.

Beasley and Hoyer couldn't catch a cold in that GF.The midfield where just bombing it as long as they could kick it.

My overall memory of that Grand Final was of a team who had experienced the pain of Grand Final defeat the previous year versus a young group most of whom had never experienced the pressure of a final prior to that year. When I got over the disappointment I was more philosophical about the result. I was far more despondent with the end to 1981 and that we didn't even make the GF that year despite having such a stellar season.

Mike I can honestly remember as a young tacker walking out of those 2 Finals in 1981 thinking will I ever see a SD Premiership?
I thought 1981 was our best team (on Paper) out of all of our teams from that era when you consider we added the likes of experienced Vfl/Tas player Daryl Sutton, Leon Baker, Peter Sartori, Murray Rance to our senior list whilst really only losing Hoyer (Haw) and Gordon Casey to retirement from 1980 and a bit more experience to our good young players we had at our disposal.
After the 1981 season we further lost Craig Holden, Simon Beasley, Ian Williams to the Vfl plus Daryl Sutton (back to Vfl), Steve Gillespie, Kim Trew & Gary McDonald to retirement and yet we went on to win the next 3 Premierships with really only Peter Kenny new to the 82 side.

Swan Districts weren't that far away and not even Claremont could get close to them at times - Toddy didn't have the balance right nor the finals experience into the troops (hence his recruitment of Graham Melrose in particular) and that wasn't fixed until 1982
And it would be fair to say that Maurice Rioli & Stephen Michael lifted even further in games between SF & SD and JT just didn't have an answer to them
Toddy and and the rest of the league slept better after 1981 when Maurice went to Richmond

I think South won seventeen straight, so everyone had problems with Brownies' team; sometimes football form is a fine line. I saw South at Perth Oval, EP making them look ordinary after half-time. From that moment on, they were very good.

The premiership was also karmic because South won with less talent than SD; the previous year, as people would remember, South lost to an EF side with less ability.

1980 might be seen in two halves
it saw the emergence of Swan Districts as a power right from the first game and they won 13 to start the season and it looked for a long way into the season that Toddy had got his re-jigging & recruiting settled , however as we know it ended up being another 2 years before all the right dominoes fell over
South Fremantle got most of it's players back in the second half of the 1980 season and won their last 13 games including the premiership , Malcolm started moving guys around , almost every game saw defenders going forward even Wayne Delmenico - then gave us another ripper in the granny with Simon Outhwaite killing Swans and Basil sent forward to seriously rattle the Swan Districts defenders very early
Maurice Rioli was just another level brilliant in both of the 1980 & 1981 finals series - we saw absolute stunners in both grannys , 1980 he just smashed Neesham who just didn't get near it when it mattered so Melrose got no help
Count myself lucky enough to have gone along to see a fair few of Maurice's WANFL games but those two games are in my top 5 footy days

It was a great time Southy that rivalry between SD, SF & CL was huge there for a few years and also EF, WP & EP were nipping away at all of us and would always cause a boilover every year if one wasnt on their game.
In your opinion what was the best side SF had during that time was it the 79, 80, 81 when Maurice was weaving his magic on spellbound opposition or even the 83 side who had introduced some new wizards like Winmar, Roe, W.Matera etc?

bease? good question.
What about SD? Did I read somewhere Todd saying that 1980 was his best side?

ArkRoyal wrote: bease? good question.
What about SD? Did I read somewhere Todd saying that 1980 was his best side?

He might have done AR.
Me personally I think 1981 was our best squad of senior players we had considering we had picked up the likes of Leon Baker, Daryl Sutton and a few young bucks like Murray Rance, Peter Sartori, Brent Hutton etc appeared in the senior squad and we only lost Gordon Casey to retirement, Tom Bell to EF & Craig Hoyer to vfl at the end of 1980.
Not to mention it was an extra year into our very good youngsters coming through like P.Narkle, Williams, Holmes, Richardson, Langsford, Solin, Fitzgerald, A.Sidebottom, Shine, M.Smith etc but at the end of the day it wasnt to be.
At the end of 1981 we lost Simon Beasley, Ian Williams, Craig Holden, Daryl Sutton to vfl whilst Steve Gillespie & Gary McDonald retired and funnily enough we went on to win the next 3 Premierships so it just goes to show!!!

BH: good analysis of the 1981 squad -- as I have mentioned before, for a long time, I took a harsh view of finishing third, but I have come around to the idea that there were a few factors at play:

some of the players were a bit out of form, something which explains why the side was patchy even in games it won

injuries

the strength of the competition

It was probably the best year in the league's history, in terms of the strength of the top clubs and in terms of the evenness of the league.

AR consider this in 1981 the likes of all time WAFL greats- Maurice Rioli, Jim Krakouer, Phil Krakouer, Brian Peake, Gary Buckenara, Simon Beasley, Craig Holden, Bill Duckworth, Alan Johnson, Wayne Otway etc were all playing that season and in peak form before leaving for the vfl in 1982 and dominating over there for years after!