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Im sitting here in a beautiful Saturday morning, reminiscing a little. As usual footy springs to mind. Its hard to get it completely out of your veins regardless of certain happenings. I just want to share with you this very weekend 30 years ago (1984).

Im sure many of you remember that season. It was one of the closest, tightest and topsy turvy seasons I can ever remember. Swans supporters will remember it as a premiership, the Sharks fellas will remember it as a re-emergence of their club after a monumental fall from grace after 1979. Claremont supporters will remember it as the year they were actually staring down the barrel at a wooden spoon at one stage, yet recovered to almost play in a Grand Final. East Perth supporters will see it as that final round on August 25th, when they somehow managed to knock South Fremantle out of that finals spot. And every other remaining club had participated in countless upsets along the way and all bar one club could have made the finals up until the third last round. It was a remarkable season and one I always look back on. It was a great time for WAFL footy with some great personalities and great vibes about town with local football.

But the Foundation Day Footy round was in full swing back then too. Back then they played 2 games on the Saturday and 2 games on the Monday.

On the Saturday Swans and Claremont battled out a heart stopping game at Bassendean in front of over 11,000 people. The tigers backs were against the wall given they were in the precarious position of 6th spot with a 4 win 5 loss ratio. They could not afford to drop this game, however they were up against the reining premiers at home who were at the time top of the tree. Yet given the tightness of the competition, if the tigers could pull off an upset, they would in fact be just a game behind Swans. A loss would drop them 3 games behind. The game was a cracker and it went down to the wire. With 40 seconds remaining the tigers were up by just 2 points. The ball spilled out to Swans half forward Don Holmes who snapped the ball over his shoulder from about 35 metres out. The ball basically went over the post and registered a behind. Claremont managed to hang on desperately for the remaining few seconds to take the win 12.13 to 12.12 in a great game. I remember this game because we were actually there that day.

Down at Subiaco Oval, the Lions were on a bit of a general surge. Showing some great form over the first half of the season, yet dropping in some customary bad games. The previous week they went on a goal scoring spree against West Perth by kicking 25 goals, and went into this game against a Perth side who the previous week went down narrowly to East Perth in the wet at Perth Oval. The Lions kicked 9 goals in the opening quarter the previous week against the Falcons, and they backed it up again with a 9.3 to 3.3 start against the Demons. Clinton Brown finished the game with 9.2 from full forward, with Rod Brown and Stephen Sells both kicking 6 goals. At the other end Peter Bosustow bagged 6 goals to give the Demons something to smile about, but in the end the 7000 strong crowd saw Subi kick a record score of 32.12 (204) to 15.12 (102).

The Foundation day games were very well attended. At Leederville Oval it was 4th (East Perth vs (5th) West Perth with over 14,000 people attending. It was a very tough game, nothing in it all day. West Perth had the better forward entries but wasted plenty. It was a tight first quarter and the Cardies held a 4 point lead at half time. In the third quarter East Perth kicked 4.0 to West Perths 2.6. Inaccuracy was really dogging them and it seemed they could lose the game based on lost opportunities. At 3/4 time the Royals held a narrow lead 9.8 to 7.18. But in the last quarter the West Perth team suffocated the Royals. Derek Kickett started to go ballistic and he ended up with 3 goals. The East Perth side battled hard but could not make enough inroads. The West Perth boys went on with the job to win the game 11.22 to 10.10 and it was enough to see them jump from 5th position to 3rd, and it saw East Perth drop from 4th position to 7th in one hit. Hence the incredible tightness of the competition.

At the Port, Fremantle Oval was bursting with just under 18,000 people streaming through the gates. Suprisingly both sides coming off losses the previous week to Swans and Claremont, so there was plenty at stake. Easts went in as slight favourites considering the Bulldogs had dropped their past 2 games, but Souths really hit the ground running in this game. The first quarter was a gem. Souths led 5.6 to Easts 5.3 and it seemed the game could go either way. But whatever Browny said at quarter time worked. The Bulldogs slammed on 7.6 in the second term and went in with a 37 point lead. It got worse for East Freamntle when Souths continued the barrage and by 3/4 time the game had been blown to pieces. Souths led 19.21 to 10.7 and they continued to share the goals around in the last quarter. Hardie, Dorotich and Matera each shared 4 goals, while Jeff Cassidy chimed in with his 4 goals for the Sharks. The final score SF 24.27 EF 15.14

The League Ladder at the end of this great weekend was so close.

SOUTH FREMANTLE 6 wins
SWAN DISTRICTS 6 wins
WEST PERTH 5 wins
SUBIACO 5 wins
CLAREMONT 5 wins
EAST FREMANTLE 5 wins
EAST PERTH 5 wins
PERTH 2 wins

Incredibly Perth went on to win their next two games against the 2 top clubs in South Fremantle and Swan Districts, to again start putting pressure on those above them. They followed up later with a big win over East Perth too winning 24.18 to 14.16. Despite their season they were involved in some big upsets.

The other interesting note is the standings in the ladder after that round showed 3 of the bottom four clubs actually ended up making the finals at the expense of 3 clubs who were currently in the top four. It was a season of very strange happenings and it all came down to the final round of the season. All Souths had to do was beat Subiaco at Fremantle Oval. By this stage the bottom had dropped out of the Lions. They had fallen just short and really had little to play for. East Perth needed to beat top side East Fremantle and they did it in style. Subi obliged the Royals by knocking off Souths and East Perth scraped in at the last hurdle.

It was an incredible year.

Great memories there Jardine. So long ago. Thanks for putting that together and a great read.. A couple of clips from that year from WAFLVIDEOARCHIVES

Final SD V EF



First semi EP V CLA


Whole lot of stuff at

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wafl+1984+video+archives

Cheers there Cardy, some great footage there. I could watch that all day

Its amazing that corresponding round in 1984, we had over 50,000 people attend the four WAFL games. That's more than the 35,000 or so that attend the AFL games here in Perth today. We had a good thing that's for sure.

And the Grand Final later that year capped off a bizzare year didn't it. Swans came out in the GF and kicked 10.7 to East Freo's 0.3. The game seemed shot to pieces until the Sharks came out and rattled on 9 goals !!! The margin went from 64 points at quarter time to 12 points at half time. A great game. I think EF got within 5 points at one stage in the third, but the class of Swans came through. They were a great side, and 30 years later they sit top again.

I think it was Paul Harding who had the opportunity to slot one through to put EF in front halfway through the third. it would have been a remarkable comeback... but it was not to be! The sad thing about WAFL attendances in the past ten years is that there has been no real growth but the population of Western Australia has gone up by a third in that time.

Actually 1984 is also one of my favourite years and not just because of my team winning the flag. As Jardine said, it was such an even competition that year and even Perth who finished on the bottom caused a number of upsets and influenced the make up of the top four. Swans finished on top of the ladder with 14 wins and 7 losses and were only 5 games clear of Subiaco who finished 2nd last. I bought a season ticket to the finals that year and each of the games were gripping contests. I will reflect more on 1984 later as I have previously written a summary of the season so I will track that down and copy it on to this thread. But now its off to Lathlain for me.....

jardine wrote: Cheers there Cardy, some great footage there. I could watch that all day

Its amazing that corresponding round in 1984, we had over 50,000 people attend the four WAFL games. That's more than the 35,000 or so that attend the AFL games here in Perth today. We had a good thing that's for sure.

And the Grand Final later that year capped off a bizzare year didn't it. Swans came out in the GF and kicked 10.7 to East Freo's 0.3. The game seemed shot to pieces until the Sharks came out and rattled on 9 goals !!! The margin went from 64 points at quarter time to 12 points at half time. A great game. I think EF got within 5 points at one stage in the third, but the class of Swans came through. They were a great side, and 30 years later they sit top again.

Must be a bit of DEJA VU going around.. when I read your post mate.. it seems to have happened to EF again v CLA in 2012... CLA 9 goals up in the second qtr EF came back withing 5 points I think but run out of legs..

www.wafl.com.au/games/view/9417

It appears Perth will have to help with the composition of the Four again this year but not be in it after todays game.. They just cant finish off and have been so close so many times..

1984 all over again...Swans EF GF possible
Crowd for CLA V EF 18,000 2012... Now that is one thing that did change
1984 Crowd 41,831

Great post Jars 1984 certainly was a great year in WA footy as we beat the Vics again in State Of Origin, beat SA at Football Park by a Robbie Wiley point on the siren and the icing on the cake was the Mighty Black & Whites taking home a hat trick of flags and the high flying Brent Hutton won the Bernie Naylor Medal as the WAFL's Leading Goalkicker!
Aahh 1984 what a great year that was!

As promised here is my take on the 1984 season. It is written from an unashamed Swans point of view. I wrote it a few years back.....
Sorry its a bit long but Swans fans may enjoy reading it....

The year started off pretty slowly for Swans with only 1 win in the first 3 rounds. None of these games were at Bassendean. For some reason or other we gave away our first home game of the season to Bunbury which was definitely to East Perths advantage and they beat us by 14 points. I watched the game on ABCTV and the boys were very rusty. Then we had a game at Claremont, which we won comfortably. It looked like the Tigers were not going to be as dominant as in previous years.

Round 3 was another Swans home game that was played at Subiaco. South Fremantle beat us by 35 points. Swans were struggling to get their teamwork going at this stage and the motivation seemed to be low. Round 4 got us back on track with a 86 point victory over Perth at Bassendean.

Round 5 was a big day in the life of Swans , it was the official celebration of their 50th anniversary. The first game that Swans played in the WAFL was against East Fremantle at Fremantle Oval in April 1934. The new team played magnificently to only lose by a few points. So on April 28 1984, Swans met East Fremantle this time at Bassendean. It was a fine occasion with over 11000 turning up for the festivities. All the surviving members of the 1934 team were invited as well as a range of players from the 50 year history. There were dinners and social events planned for later in the day, but firstly there was a game of football to be won. East Fremantle had started the season very well, winning three of their first four matches and they very nearly spoiled the party on this day. A desperately close last quarter where the Sharks demonstrated that they were going to be right in the hunt for finals. Swans however hung on to win by 5 points much to the relief of all of us supporters. The evening celebrations would have been a bit muted no doubt if the game had gone the other way.

Subiaco was another team that was on the improve and Swans as the double reining premiers were now the hunted team for all improving teams. In round 6 Subiaco gave us a hell of a game at Subiaco Oval before we again scraped home by one goal. Then in round 7, West Perth came to Bassendean and gave us another working over, this time we didn’t survive it, losing by 6 points.

It was hard to know what to make of the season so far, 4 wins and 3 losses. Unlike previous seasons though, 3 of the wins had been by the barest margin which indicated to me that Swans had come back to the field somewhat.

In rounds 8 and 9 Swans appeared to get somewhat back on track with wins over East Perth ( 54 points) and another nailbiter at Bassendean against South. Again the game was in doubt till late in the last quarter before we hung on by 8 points. Certainly the neutral supporters who wanted to see a competitive game were getting value from Swans in the first half of the season.

That was reinforced in round 10 when Claremont came to Bassendean and the game was a hard fought scrap all day in front of a foundation day holiday crowd of 11000. It really would have been fair to both teams for it to be a draw but fairness and footy sometimes don't go together and we lost by a measly point.

A 6 – 4 win loss record became 6-5 the next week when Perth handed us an unexpected defeat at Lathlain. There had been a weeks bye after the previous round and Perth caught us on the hop and totally deserved their victory. Not for the first time this season, I started to wonder if the golden era was over. East Fremantle Oval was probably the worst place to go to try and get out of a slump at this stage. And so it proved. The Sharks demonstrated why they were finals contenders by handing us a 36 point defeat. It was turning out to be a very even season with only Perth not really in the hunt for a finals berth.

So at 6- 6 we were in a precarious position and our finals prospects were looking bleak. It was at this stage that I imagine that Todd may have had a heart to heart with his players ( or probably more a figurative mass poke in the chest) to share a few home truths and to find out how many of them wanted to play in a triple premiership team. Whatever he did it worked a treat because after round 12, swans won 8 of their last 9 qualifying matches, which was enough in the even season to put them on top of the ladder. It was amazing, they had won 4 less games than the ladder topping team of 1980.

The only off day they had was a 34 point loss to West Perth at Leederville, when the falcons were making a late season run at the finals, which Swans finally killed off in round 21.

The only victories of early 80s standards were a 105 point thrashing of Subiaco at Bassendean and a surprise 72 point victory over Claremont who were starting to build towards the finals. This was the last caning of Subiaco for quite some time as the lions were on the rise and would be in the finals in 1985. The Claremont game in Round 16 was more significant as we played the type of power football which I had now become accustomed to over the past 5 years. It also convinced me that Swans still had the ability and motivation to go all the way again.

The Claremont game was also one of Brett Huttons best ever games Brett had lived a bit in the shadow of other Swans forwards and he had also had a lot of injuries, but this day he benefitted from the lace up delivery from the classy midfield. He ended up with 83 goals for the season.

During July there was another State of Origin Tuesday game against Victoria. Todd was the coach of WA being the premiership coach. WA won another high scoring thriller by 4 points 21- 16 to 21-12. The game was notable for the debut of a young Victorian called Gary Ablett who was to go on to be one of the greatest players of the modern era.

Some of the victories that Swans had over the last section of the season were all hard fought and in retrospect gave Sswans a good foundation for tough finals to come. One highlight was a 6 goal victory over the Sharks at Bassendean which was revenge for the round 12 defeat and a good psychological blow for the finals.
The top four ended up being Swans, East Fremantle, Claremont and East Perth. South Fremantle lost their way towards the end of the season after looking certain to make it earlier and Subiaco were the big improvers.

As expected Claremont beat East Perth in the 1st semi. I had brought a season pass to the 3 tier stand for all the finals, so I sat impassively in my seat watching this game, getting to know the people sitting next to me, a couple of sweet old ladies who were Perth supporters. They explained to me that they had brought the tickets at the start of the season in the hope that Perth had made the finals.

When it was obvious that Perth couldn’t make the finals, they decided to come anyway to enjoy the footy. We had a nice chat on the day of the first semi but the ladies saw a different side of me the next week when swans were playing. Cursing the Swans players, cursing the opposition and cursing the umpire. It was pretty non stop. You have to hand it to these ladies though, towards the end of the finals they started bringing me tea and biscuits and started barracking for Swans despite the bulging veins in the back of my neck! Hopefully they weren’t intimidated into doing that!

Swans were ambushed in the 2nd semi by a very committed East Fremantle led by Ron Alexander. Swans had won 7 in a row to that stage so there may have been an element of complacency in the performance, but what the Sharks did was to be very physical with Swans, not in a dirty way, but in terms of their aggression on the ball. Of course I yelled and screamed that we were getting a raw deal from the umpires but on reflection even I would have to admit that many of the free kicks were given because East Fremantle were more ferocious in their attack on the ball. When we got the ball, East Fremantle tackled and bumped and gave us no space at all. The result was a 26 point victory which was closer than it seemed watching the game.

We then had to play Claremont in the preliminary final and I thought that the Tigers may have noted East Fremantle’s approach and would try the same. At the start of the game the Tigers were more pacey and Swans were struggling to keep up. At this stage I was thinking that we were going to go out in straight sets. We were about 20 points down in the first half and this was another time where Swans took a deep breath and found their desire again. Boucher had been playing injured and he took his place in this game, which ultimately cost him a place in the grand final. Swans overran Claremont to the extent that in the last quarter the result was inevitable, Swans ended up winning by 21 points.

So it was the Swans and Sharks in the Grand Final. We had the advantage of experience in big games, but it was a matter of how much did we want it. East Fremantle must have planned their strategy around the same physical approach of the 2nd semi and they came out pumped up. However this time they went a step too far as early in the game, Kevin Taylor, a moustached rover who was to change to Swans the next year, flattened one of the Swans players in the centre in front of the umpire. This resulted in a free kick and a swans goal. This incident focussed Swans and distracted the Sharks and the boys started landing goals from everywhere.

Don Holmes was playing the quarter of his life and East Fremantle appeared powerless to stop it. There was a slight breeze blowing up to our end but nothing that justified the score at quarter time of 10 – 4 to 0-3. It was surreal as I thought that we had won the flag in one quarter. I was dead wrong, the quarter time break changed the whole momentum of the game and the Sharks started piling on the goals in the 2nd quarter, Ken Marshall got one for Swans at the other end but a goal right on the siren got EF back within 2 goals. It was amazing there was no gale but of the 20 goals in first half, 19 of them were at the Subiaco end.

The 3rd quarter started off in worrying fashion as East Fremantle continued on where they had left off at half time. They kicked a few goals at the Perth end and it got to a point when the Sharks came within 1 point. At this stage I could scarcely believe it. I was starting to imagine the headlines the next morning ‘’Swans blow a 10 goal lead’’ they would scream. The issue for East Fremantle was that they had used so much energy getting back into the game they were tiring, I’ll bet they regretted Taylor's brain fade in the first part of the game. Swans gradually reasserted their authority and midway through the last quarter I relaxed again.

So the black and whites of 1982 - 84 equalled the feats of the 1961 – 63 team, it seemed we only won our flags in threes. The beer tasted just as good that night as the previous two Septembers. Barry Kimberley won the Simpson medal. I’m sure he was glad that he had transferred over from Perth.

Enjoyed the article.. Don Holmes a forgotten legend but in his time a power player..Thanks for the memories mate

I remember Subi's adds on the tv "In 1984 the Lions will Roar !!!"
Well we didn't but we gave it a shake in 85 but it took till 86 till we took home the chocolates !!! Now that was a long wait but well worth it and we've been half descent ever since - especially considering the dark old days of the late 70's and early 80's.