Another article in the West for you to read.
A WAFL regular was threatened with eviction from a recent match after getting on the wrong side of a particularly zealous security guard.
His crime? He was standing at one end and yelled out: “C’mon ump, you know that was a goal” when his team floated through a kick that was signalled a behind.
Told he would be thrown out if he made another equally unacceptable comment, the bewildered stalwart was still shaking his head – only partly metaphorically – several days later when he wondered whether to continue paying his long-time membership or providing the free professional services that had enhanced his club and the league numerous times over the years.
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“Does the WAFL actually want people to come to games?” he asked. “Fair enough that you shouldn’t abuse umpires or players but what’s wrong with a little passion?”
That this event occurred during the same game that a prominent player copped repeated gobfuls of vile abuse from several spectators, with a non-existent response from the security detail, suggests that the State league still has plenty to do to get the right balance between its behavioural and promotional standards.
A few days ago, the WAFL’s biggest challenge was to drive the promotion of a league that had just come out of a round with five eight-point games and was about to enter an absorbing round with as much at stake.
The football was selling itself but was the league doing enough to link the product and its potential consumers?
A couple of days later and that now seems a trifling issue.
The competition might only stop for one week though, unlike the rescheduled Anzac weekend which slipped easily into a later bye round, will require a significant fixture shift to ensure the full 18 home-and-away matches are played.
The postponed round 13 could slot into the last weekend of August but that would require the grand final to be played on the same weekend as the AFL decider.
That’s hardly ideal though given the uncertainty of the COVID landscape, the WAFL might as well get on with things knowing that the AFL can no more guarantee a grand final date than ensure the location of its matches.
West Coast’s predicament is more dire.
The Eagles have been one of the league’s form team in the past two weeks with their winless record morphing into powerful five and 51-point victories as the return of a cohort of AFL-listed players made a mockery of the club’s early-season gripes about not having a competitive playing group.
But West Coast are currently tiptoeing along a tightrope that could see the remainder of their WAFL season suffer a terminal fall should their players not be able to return from Melbourne next week.
The imminent lost round can be made up but not having the players to field a team when the action restarts could make West Coast the first club since Rovers in 1899 to withdraw midway through a season.
The Eagles have already delivered a couple of notable achievements.
In 2019, they became the only WAFL team to win a final in their first season.
And this year they were the only club – apart from Swan Districts during the World War II under-age competition – to return after pulling out of the competition.
Making history is one thing but becoming the only club to twice withdraw from the WAFL would require a significant rethink of the current arrangements.
Wednesday hero:
Trenchant WAFL figure Percy Johnson is battling ill-health and has become increasingly robust in his advice to Swan Districts coach Adam Pickering to pick his young ruck protégé Matthew Germs sooner rather than later.
“I may not be around to see him play if you wait much longer,” Johnson told the coach recently.
The 200cm and 100kg Germs, who has the most apt name of 2021 if nothing else, was finally handed a debut last Saturday and responded with 21 hit-outs and enough presence to not only combat Subiaco’s Sandover medallist Lachlan Delahunty but allow veteran Corey Gault to have a big say in the forward line in the one-point win.
Percy has rarely been more delighted.
