OPINION: "The One-Team-Town Years: West Coast Eagles' Ridiculous Name and Playing Jersey and its Faulty Original Playing Squad", by Jack Frost

The old-school meets the new-school (Foxtel Cup, 16/7/2011): Port Adelaide Magpies supporters at the corporate Subiaco Oval, home of West Coast Eagles and once a great traditional atmospheric football ground with grassy bank at the city end and concrete terraces for standing room only on the Roberts Road or scoreboard wing (REST IN PEACE). The Chardonnay set wins again.

The one-team-town years in Perth, 1987-94

Leederville Oval, fine winter's day, 6/7/2011

The author especially disliked the “one-team-town” football culture in Perth in the years 1987 to 1994 and, to a much lesser extent, the two-team culture that exists up until the present day. During the horrible one-team-town years, if you did not support West Coast, you were marginalized and perceived as being disloyal to your state. There was page upon page of coverage in the newspapers about every single ankle injury and every possible team strategy at West Coast until people became heartily sick and tired of reading about the team and its media-worshipped elite super-heroes. There was no longer any sense of balance or perspective in the media as there had been in the WAFL’s Golden Era when each of the eight traditional WAFL clubs had received a fair share, if not an exactly equal share, of media space. Western Australian news reporters no longer in many cases even pretended to be neutral or objective in the one-team-town era. Instead, previously reputable sporting commentators, the late Geoff Christian not excluded, would let their full bias for West Coast hang out in a completely ugly manner. There were horrible “Footballer of the Year” awards where only West Coast players were eligible to score votes and the full complement of votes were allocated even when the team was thrashed. People simply forgot that it takes two teams to play a football match. This ridiculous and offensive culture in Perth (or should we say “defensive culture” when applied to the Mick Malthouse era) created an atmosphere where Ben Cousins became as high profile as any Hollywood actor or rock-star and the press was always gushing with praise and horribly sycophantic. It is little wonder that Cousins and his friends were no longer able to maintain balanced pictures of themselves inside the Perth West Coast Eagles “bubble”.

The author even recalls a newspaper article which told of a West Coast fan that had gone to Sydney to watch a West Coast game and expected to see the blue-and-gold colours everywhere. When she met some people wearing blue-and-gold colours it turned out, not surprisingly, to be a group of Parramatta Eels NRL supporters. The naivety here is incredible since the girl, and she was not pre-pubescent, literally had begun to believe that, because of the sycophantic adulation paid to West Coast in Perth, West Coast was objectively “big” and worshipped by people all around Australia if not the world. Our one-team-town totally non-objective news reporting created an irrational, illogical, and literally false bubble that was totally disconnected to the real world that existed outside of Perth. Of course ideology, when it is becomes too far removed from reality, creates a sort of collective mental illness. A good example of such news reporting, still available on Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13JyIGMOPBU, accessed 29 March 2011), describes a controversial event in the old NSL when the Perth Glory player, Slobodan “Bobby” Despotovski, was threatened by Melbourne Knights’ fans whilst trying to board his team’s bus after he had given the largely Croatian crowd a three-fingered Serbian war-salute. Of course the Perth news crew, extremely simplistically, presented the Knights’ fans and even the President of Melbourne Knights, Mr Harry Mrksa, as hopelessly violent and irrelevant ethnics and Perth Glory as the popular team-of-the-future (ostensibly a “non-ethnic” team, whatever that might be).

West Coast Eagles’ name and jersey design

The name “West Coast” has always grated with the author too. Foundation West Coast player, Steve Malaxos, wrote in 1991 in Inside the Eagles: The Untold Story about the initial playing group’s surprise when West Coast was announced as the team’s name when Perth Eagles would have been, in his words, the “obvious option” (Malaxos, 1991, p. 21). He states that the players were “a little mystified” (Malaxos, 1991, p. 21) by the adoption of “the American term” (Malaxos, 1991, p. 21). In the USA, it is common to speak of “East Coast culture” or a “West Coast dress sense” or an “East Coast legal team” with West Coast and East Coast being used as adjectives. In Western Australia, prior to 1987, the author does not think the term “West Coast”, representing the name of a specific place, was in use in either adjective or noun forms. Weather reporters may have referred to “cyclones threatening the west coast”, but the west coast has always been too long a stretch of coastline for that description to convey much useful information. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether “west coast” ever reached that point of common usage and accepted definition that would turn it into a proper noun. For example, “Eastern Europe” is regarded as a proper noun because it is generally understood to have a precise meaning, i.e. it refers to the old communist bloc. However, by contrast, “southern Europe” has not reached the status of a proper noun. The word “southern” is only used as an adjective here and it is not capitalized if it appears in mid-sentence. The author believes that in 1987 West Coast was not a generally accepted place name in Australia in its proper noun form. Therefore, arguably the place did not exist and the team’s name was and is complete nonsense because you cannot name a club after a place which does not exist! Furthermore, the term was rarely if ever used even with “west” or “west coast” operating as adjectives. People did not speak of “west coast culture” or “west coast dressing”. The “east coast” was always referred to as “the eastern states”, never as the “east coast”, although this term “eastern states” is never used in the eastern states themselves. Therefore, linguistically and in every other way, West Coast was then and remains today a singularly inappropriate name for a football club. The author admits to supporting any team that plays West Coast as that other team is the temporary embodiment of his hopes and beliefs.

Ross Glendinning, 1987, original eagles' wings

The jersey of gold with blue eagles’ wings, and its later reverse, were also very silly football jumpers in the author’s view. The wings looked hilarious, as if produced by a comedy act, but in Western Australia you had to treat even the jersey wings with the utmost respect and seriousness during the one-team-town era when the Eagles were gods. Only recently did the club slowly and quietly move away from the eagles’ wings for home matches to a St Kilda style jersey of three blue, white, and gold vertical panels with an eagle’s head in the centre. The away jersey retains the wings but if you look closely the wings start the same as before in the two shoulder regions but then they taper off and disappear much more quickly down the sides of the jersey than originally was the case. The original wings can be seen in all their original, ridiculous glory, in the iconic photograph of Richmond captain Mark Lee shaking hands with West Coast’s inaugural captain Ross Glendinning before the Eagles’ first home-and-away VFL fixture at Subiaco Oval in March 1987. The wings are now less obviously wings and look just like little smidgeons of alternative colouring in the shoulder regions. The restrained and simple playing jerseys of new AFL clubs Gold Coast Suns and Greater Western Sydney Giants also suggest that visually shocking playing strips may no longer be the fashion. The Port Adelaide Power and Fremantle Dockers also wore much simpler and more traditional style home jerseys in 2011.

Current smaller eagles' wings, away jersey

The West Coast first-generation off-field leaders claimed (cited in Barker, 2004, p. 205) that “Perth Eagles” was not used to avoid confusion with WAFL club Perth but this explanation fails to convince given the total disregard and disrespect for Western Australia football history and traditions shown by the first-generation of West Coast’s businessperson leaders. “Perth Eagles” or “East Perth Eagles” or “Subiaco Eagles” would have been far more suitable names as Malaxos (1991) suggests. It is more likely that adherence to the “ground-zero” ideology of WA and West Coast’s football leaders in late 1986 meant that change-for-change’s-sake had to be the approach applied literally to everything. Perhaps the first-generation West Coast leaders simply were not proud of the name of their own city. Curtin University academic Dr. Sean Gorman (2005) suggests in his book BrotherBoys: the Story of Jim and Phillip Krakouer that, by using the name “West Coast”, the club was presumptuously claiming the loyalty of people living over a vast area of land. Why not go one step further and call the club “Perth-Adelaide Eagles” or “Nullabor Eagles” or even “Australian Eagles”? Famously, the soccer club Dinamo Zagreb of Croatia changed its name to Croatia Zagreb during the days of high-nationalism in the early-1990s before sensible supporter discontent resulted in a reversion to the much superior original club name. It will be clear how totally silly the “Croatia Zagreb” name was by saying that the local equivalent would be calling a football team “Australia Perth”!

Current home St Kilda-style jersey (wings gone)

Western Australian people realized, even if only unconsciously, that “West Coast” was indeed a silly name and people rarely used the name in conversation or in the media (i.e. in the early years in the late-1980s and early-1990s). Instead, the name used in conversation and in the press was simply “the Eagles” with a peculiar emphasis placed on the word “the” which was generally pronounced with excessive reverence and devotion much like the name “Comrade Stalin” was pronounced in the former Soviet Union. These were “the Eagles”, not just any old common or garden variety types of eagles and people refused to allow you to disagree or to forget that. The word “the” has rarely been subjected to such overloading of meaning and implications. The word was usually pronounced as “thee Eagles” (“thee” rhyming with “tree”) with a longish spell of silence between the two words. Arguably, there were even vague, quasi-religious overtones here as in “I worship thee Eagles”. The media and most Perth-based football supporters demanded that excessive reverence be given to “the Eagles” when those same individuals refused to show any reverence or even respect for the eight traditional WAFL clubs as part of the hegemonic, “ground-zero” ideology that was in vogue during the one-team-town era. The only positive thing about the name West Coast in the author’s opinion, and please take this as the joke it is intended to be, is that a name change will not be needed if the club mimics the legendary Brooklyn Dodgers by relocating to California!

Alternative national-league arrangements not considered

Indicative of Western Australia’s “either-or” (not “both-and”) mentality in relation to higher-level sport, no-one in Western Australian football ever seriously suggested in 1986 that the VFL/AFL/NFL or the WAFL make any type of reasonable effort to safeguard the WAFL competition. Possible alternative formats never considered include any or all of the following:

(a) playing VFL/AFL/NFL games mid-week on a Wednesday night as the National Football League’s Wills Cup was played in the 1970s and how State of Origin rugby-league is played today; and/or

(b) reducing the size of both seasons and playing the VFL/AFL/NFL and WAFL seasons one after the other with one running from February to June and the other from July to November like how the A-League plays in summer and the state soccer premier leagues in winter or like the “Super 15” rugby competition season finishes several months prior to the finish of the traditional club-based competitions in Sydney and Brisbane; and/or

(c) accepting only extant, traditional club teams into a national league rather than composite teams. This model is more likely to keep the second-tier leagues strong as supporters of the clubs left in the second tier will be less likely to switch to the national league side than under the composite-club model. You would then have a situation similar, at least in theory, to one London club being promoted one division in English soccer (say, West Ham United) while all the others stayed where they were (Arsenal, Chelsea, Millwall, Tottenham, etc.) – it would not have a great effect on any of the divisions/leagues.

If any or all of these ideas had been tried perhaps the WAFL might have larger crowds and a higher profile than it has today. However, we remember Brisbane Strikers’ premiership soccer player Frank Farina’s comments about Australian sporting crowds. English fans “who support Huddersfield Town in division five will support Huddersfield Town”, according to Farina. In the case of English soccer, in the Blue Square Premier League (the former Vauxhall Conference and fifth tier of the pyramid), the once strong Football League clubs Cambridge United, Luton Town, and Oxford United averaged crowds of 3,156; 6,816, and 6,376 respectively in the 2008-09 season with the highest crowds for these three clubs being 4,870; 8,223; and 10,613 (up to and including 9 November 2008, as reported on p. 42 of Non League magazine, December 2009 edition). These are obviously very good crowds for teams playing at the fifth tier of the pyramid and outside the Football League and are indicative of strong supporter loyalty towards these traditional clubs. Luton Town’s record average home crowd of 13,452 in 1982-83 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luton_Town_F.C., accessed 8 April 2011), when the club played in the then First Division, means that crowds dropped only by 55% between 1982-83 and 2008-09 despite a drop of four tiers. In contrast to English fans, according to Frank Farina, Australian fans will only watch, in any significant numbers, what they perceive to be the premier or the national competition in any sport. This caveat must be borne in mind when considering any of my suggested alternative solutions (a) to (c) above. WAFL crowds have fallen by around 75% since 1986 although the WAFL clubs have effectively dropped down only by one tier if we regard the old VFL, WAFL, and SANFL as having all been on tier one of the pyramid in the pre-West Coast era.

The inaugural 1987 West Coast Eagles’ playing squad

The official club historian Brian Atkinson (2008, p. 202) states that West Perth sometimes did not receive its fair share of state team representatives in years when the club made the finals. Atkinson (2008, p. 202) comments that: “The failure of any West Perth player to gain state selection in 1984 was a matter of great controversy within the West Perth camp”, especially as the club was in third place at the time the team was selected (only to eventually miss the finals). The West Coast initial 35-man squad for season 1987 was also disheartening for some West Perth supporters. The five West Perth players chosen were: John Gastev, Sean King, Dean Laidley, Paul Mifka, and Dean Warwick with King being a later addition to the original 32-player squad first announced at the official launch at Perth’s Merlin (now Hyatt) Hotel (Christian, 1986; The West Australian, 31 October 1986, player profiles, p. 102). These players were bright and promising youngsters but arguably, with the exception of Laidley and perhaps Gastev, they had not yet developed the consistency or backlog of strong performances to merit selection. The five West Perth players in the initial West Coast squad were clearly chosen, if not at random, then by someone largely disrespectful towards the club. Favourite sons of the club, such as Phil Bradmore, Les Fong, and Peter Menaglio, were wilfully overlooked although their careers were still active and their playing performances were still strong. Although Brian Atkinson “did not have any strong feelings either way” (personal conversation with the author, 8 July 2011) about the initial choice of West Perth players by the Eagles, he states “you would have to include Fong and Menaglio” as the top two players for the club during the drought era and prior to the formation of West Coast. Both Fong and Menaglio were named in the club’s “Team of the Century”, Menaglio on the left wing and Fong as the first rover (Atkinson, 2008, Appendix 2, p. 270). Menaglio continued to play senior football with West Perth up until the 1989 season (Atkinson, 2008, p. 367) so he was hardly “over the hill” by late 1986. Bradmore’s birth-date was 2 April 1959; Fong’s was 24 August 1956 whilst Menaglio’s was 4 September 1958, making these three players 27, 30, and 28-years-of-age, respectively, as at October 1986 (Atkinson, 2008, pp. pp. 350, 356, 367). As mentioned, Menaglio won the Breckler Medal for club fairest-and-best in 1984 whilst Bradmore won it in the following year. Menaglio was also equal runner-up behind the three tied winners for the 1984 Sandover Medal (Atkinson, 2008, p. 202). Les Fong was a close runner-up to Menaglio in the 1984 Breckler Medal count and, from 1981-84, Menaglio and Fong shared four Breckler Medals (Atkinson, 2008, p. 202). Fong top-scored for the club with 14 votes at the 1986 Sandover Medal count, won by Mark Bairstow of South Fremantle, although, astonishingly, there were no West Perth players in the top 24 (yes, read that again, it is not a typo) (The West Australian, 16 September 1986, pp. 87-8).

Also worthy of consideration for selection by West Coast in late 1986 were Corry Bewick (West Perth), Derek Kickett (Claremont/ ex-West Perth), and George Michalczyk (West Perth). A newspaper report at the time suggested that Darren Bewick, younger brother of Corry, was not chosen because he had elected to remain in Perth for two more years to complete his teaching degree (Christian, 1986). It appears that West Perth was unfashionable for the corporate set that was running West Coast, compared to players from East Fremantle and Subiaco, despite the fact that West Perth had beaten East Fremantle consistently in 1985. The disrespect shown to the club's favourite sons, and especially to Bradmore, Fong, and Menaglio, rankled with some West Perth supporters. It would have been a mark of respect to Fong and to the club if Fong had been selected, if only for one or two seasons, in the same way that Robert Wiley of Perth (formerly of Richmond) had been brought into the West Coast squad for 1987 at the twilight of that player’s esteemed career. West Coast’s initial squad was chosen for the future and, in hindsight, we might fail to realize how young the players were then since now, looking back, we remember the distinguished VFL/AFL careers that many of that initial squad later had. Even Phil Narkle was allegedly only 24-years-old despite already having played at St Kilda for three seasons (The West Australian, 31 October 1986, player profiles, p. 102). (In fact The West Australian of 31 October 1986 was in error: Narkle was actually 25-years-old as at 31 October 1986. The ninth 2011 edition of The Encyclopaedia of AFL Footballers at page 627 lists his birth date as being 29 January 1961.) Don Holmes (27), Glendinning (30), Turner (27), and Wiley (31) were the only inaugural West Coast players aged over 25 as at 31 October 1986 according to The West Australian (31 October 1986, player profiles, p. 102). It seems that the general principle which guided selection was to only select players aged over 25 if they had prior VFL/AFL experience. Bradmore’s prior VFL/AFL experience seems to have been either forgotten or discounted. In hindsight, at least, West Coast erred with its selection of the five West Perth players in 1987 or it clearly picked players that it had no real intention, in advance, of awarding game time to. King and Mifka managed only one game each for West Coast and Warwick played zero. Early Eagles squad members from Swan Districts such as Kevin Caton (1 West Coast game, 1988); Joe Cormack (10 games, 1988); Don Holmes (23 games, 1987-89); Brent Hutton (13 games, 1988-89); and Don Langsford (zero games) suffered similar fates which further soured the relationship between Swan Districts and West Coast.

Steve Malaxos

In the 1986 Sandover Medal count, Laidley was equal second among West Perth players with thirteen votes while Gastev was fourth highest with eleven votes. However, Warwick and King were way down the list, polling only two votes each and coming in at equal fifteenth for the club, while Mifka polled no votes at all. West Perth supporters could be forgiven for having being somewhat mystified about the five West Perth players selected. Had they been picked with only a bare minimum of thought just to make up the numbers with the West Coast leadership having had no serious prior intention of awarding any of them serious game time? Were people like Ron Alexander and Graham Moss unduly influenced by old WAFL club rivalries which led to them give insufficient thought to the selection of West Perth players and insufficient respect to the players who had played best for West Perth in the prior three seasons? West Perth’s 1986 Sandover Medal vote getting list should have been treated with more respect by the West Coast leadership.

Apart from Laidley, only Gastev later had anything resembling a successful VFL/AFL career and the vast majority of his games (113 out of 143) were played with the Brisbane Bears. Similarly, Laidley is better known today, as his Wikipedia page writes, for his 99 games for North Melbourne than for his earlier stint at West Coast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Laidley, accessed 6 March 2011). The 1994 West Coast premiership team featured zero West Perth players and only one ex-West Perth player (see the team in playing positions reproduced below). The ex-West Perth player was David Hart. In addition to Hart, Craig Turley did play 115 games for West Coast between 1989 and 1995 and was a 1992 premiership player. A further reason for the author’s initial dislike for West Coast, which has mellowed only but slightly over the years, was the lack of West Perth players in the team [by Jack Frost, 7 August 2012, this revised version dated 31 July 2014].
West Coast Eagles' 1994 premiership team

Backs	Ashley McIntosh	Michael Brennan	David Hart
Half-backs	Guy McKenna	Glen Jakovich	John Worsfold
Centres	Chris Mainwaring	Don Pyke	Peter Matera
Half-forwards	Brett Heady	Jason Ball	Peter Wilson
Forwards	Chris Lewis	Peter Sumich	Shane Bond
Ruck	David Hynes	Dean Kemp	Tony Evans
Interchange	Chris Waterman	Drew Banfield	Ryan Turnbull

(Source: West Coast Eagles' official website at: http://www.westcoasteagles.com.au/history/1994-premiership-team, accessed 31 July 2014).