Round 21, 1986 - Subiaco FC 27.17 (179) d West Perth FC 12.9 (81), Subiaco Oval

Laurie Keene - outstanding for Subiaco Lions in the ruck this day at the tail-end of the 1986 WAFL season - he changed the way the game was played by helping to force the six-foot-one inch ruckmen out of the first rucks.

Round 21, 1986 – Subiaco v West Perth, Subiaco Oval

Peter Featherby - back at Subi in 86

Readers may be wondering why I include this game as a “classic match” here on the website when Subiaco defeated West Perth by 98 points. I define “classic” to include not only close and exciting games but also games which are somehow representative of a season or an era for one or both competing teams and/or for the league itself. This game proved how devastatingly brilliant the Subiaco team of 1986 was – the last truly great team of the WAFL’s Glory Days which ended with the formation of West Coast Eagles FC. On its home ground, Subiaco literally dismantled piece by piece a West Perth team which had final four aspirations at the start of the game. In the end, the game was little more than a training run for the home team and master-coach Haydn Bunton Junior used it to trial a new forward set-up with Todd Breman at full-forward. The late Geoff Christian wrote a long and detailed match report of this game (full-text is reproduced below) primarily because the match had vital significance for the coming final round where Subiaco was due to play its only serious challenger for the premiership Ron Alexander’s East Fremantle in the second semi-final.

Peter Featherby - brilliant till the end

Subiaco’s nominated team (see below) shows what a strong team Haydn Bunton Junior had managed to assemble since he took over the perpetual cellar-dwellers at the start of the 1984 season. It included the perfect blend of youth and experience; a first-rate ruck led by the gentle giant Laurie Keene and the reliable Phil Scott (both of whom could kick goals in the forward-line); the best forward-line seen in the WAFL since the Claremont team of the early-1980s which had featured Warren Ralph, Steve Malaxos, and Jim and Phil Krakouer; and some fast-running, aggressive, and competent defenders including Clinton Brown (a vast improver), Michael Crutchfield, Phil Lamb, and Mark Zanotti. Experience was provided by the ever loyal rover Neil Taylor (one of the few players left over from the failed years in the second-half of the 1970s and the early-1980s) and the brilliant Peter Featherby, back from his time at Footscray and Geelong but still performing at very close to his VFL/AFL standard. In this game Featherby dominated the midfield (a traditional area of strength for West Perth in the 1970s and 1980s) with 31 kicks. He was nominated as second-best Subiaco player on the ground behind Todd Breman.

Mark Zanotti - bogan till die!

The highlight of this game for the fans must have been watching the brilliance of a Subiaco team which lost the end-of-season challenge game to Hawthorn by only two points and was clearly a VFL/AFL standard team. Up forward Haydn Bunton Junior in this West Perth game experimented with Todd Breman at full-forward who kicked 10.1, the first double-figure goals tally since the days of Austin Robertson in the 1960s. Geoff Christian even claimed that Breman’s fast and efficient leading and his drop-punt accuracy reminded him of Robertson. As an indication of the new depth at Subiaco, Breman had played at full-forward in the reserves in the Round 1 game against East Fremantle. Furthermore, Laurie Keene had demonstrated his undoubted class as a full-forward with nine goals against Swan Districts in April 1985 but Bunton enjoyed the luxury this day of changing the ruckmen Keene and Scott through the back-pocket. Centre-half-forward Warren Dean (later to play with distinction for Melbourne) kicked 4.5 whilst the very handy VFA/VFL pick-up the unobtrusive Stephen Sells added 4.4 from the forward pocket. Phil Lamb and Laurie Keene were the other best players nominated from Subiaco to gain votes from this game in the WA Footballer of the Year Award. Phil Lamb was a reliable and hard-working player and loyal team-man. Like Neil Taylor, he managed to improve his skills and maintain a place in the starting 18 even in the years of Bunton’s super-team. Both players clearly enjoyed being able to play in such a great side after years of being part of a club which had become the joke of Western Australian football after years when it had found it difficult to manage as many as six wins a season. As well as his 1986 premiership medallion, Taylor deserved another medal for enduring so many lean years at Subiaco which in his case stretched back as far as 1975. It was players like these two which the inaugural West Coast Eagles FC team lacked in 1987 with the Eagles’ initial squad being heavily biased towards fashionable but somewhat green young players under the age of 24 years. Laurie Keene, simply because of his great height, revolutionized ruck play in WA football with the days of ruckmen of 183-185 cms. tall (six-foot to six-foot-one) such as South Fremantle’s Stephen Michael effectively coming to an end around this time. (Michael perhaps is not a good example to illustrate this point since during his playing years he had a huge leap which allowed him to compete at centre bounce downs against much taller players such as Ron Boucher and Graham Moss, as well as West Perth’s Ben Jager and Russell Ellen. I did not watch enough Subiaco versus South Fremantle games in the early-1980s to knowledgably comment but surely Michael must have struggled against a ruckman as tall as Keene.)

Dean Laidley - WP / NM/  PA

Only centreman Dean Laidley out of the West Perth players rated in the best five men on the ground. He performed brilliantly to achieve a second best-on-ground rating in a team which lost by 98 points. Again we can see this game as indicative of the era, with Laidley’s talent being spotted by the West Coast Eagles. He was among five West Perth players chosen in the West Coast squad, and all of these five were youth. West Perth was comprehensively outplayed and defeated, morally as much as in any other way. Ever since the premiership year of 1975, West Perth’s strength had been its running midfielders and its weaknesses had been its ruckmen and its key-position forwards and defenders. This trend continued with West Perth’s defenders being comprehensively outplayed this day by Subiaco’s potent forward-line. Christian noted that the Subiaco forwards would be put under much more pressure by East Fremantle defenders such as Shane Ellis and Michael “Monkey” Brennan in the second semi-final.

Dean Laidley - working-class man!

By 1986 (although not in 1984) the WAFL had become somewhat predictable. As a journalist of the time said, Subiaco and East Fremantle were by far the best teams in 1986 with Perth far below these two but far ahead of fourth-placed Claremont. The dominance of Subiaco and East Fremantle can be seen from their respective win-loss records of 17-4 and 16-5. Ominously, for all other clubs, both these teams won their last two home-and-away games of the 1986 season. The gap between the top two teams and fourth-placed Claremont was clearly evident from East Fremantle’s stunning Round 21 win over Claremont at Claremont Oval where the port-based team won 27.14 (176) to 13.11 (89). As Christian pointed out in a second article on the Monday following Round 21 (see quote below), Perth and Claremont lost by a combined 123 points on the Saturday. Perth lost to a fast improving East Perth 21.21 (147) to 16.15 (111) at home at Lathlain Park, a loss which must have been extremely frustrating and worrying for Perth FC fans on the eve of the finals. The only comforting fact for Perth fans of course was that their club’s first semi-final opponent Claremont was performing equally poorly. Perth in fact lost the last two games of the season but was still sitting comfortably in third place after Round 21. Only a few Perth fans dared to hope that now, under one Malcolm Gregory Brown, the club might win its first premiership since 1977.

Ross Gibbs (WP champion), 1982, Scanlens card

Returning to the West Perth team, it appears that the team was beaten in every position on the ground including the centreline and ruck-roving, the team’s strongest areas in the 1970s and 1980s. Christian wrote enthusiastically about Peter Featherby’s 31 kicks in the centre and the winning efforts of rovers Neil Taylor and Glen O’Loughlin and ruck-rover Dwayne Lamb. Laurie Keene and Phil Scott won the ruck contests against Dan Foley and Craig Nelson. Kim Rogers, the best West Perth ruckman of 1985-86, was again not playing due to injury. He was sorely missed. Games like these made one realize West Perth had depended very heavily on Phil Bradmore, Les Fong, and Peter Menaglio for success (especially in the 1985 season when the team had made the finals). With these three star players all either beaten comprehensively (Bradmore and Fong) or not playing (Peter “Saint Peter” Menaglio), West Perth was not at all competitive. Bradmore needed to dominate at centre-half-forward and kick a barrel of goals himself for West Perth to win a match against strong opposition. In this game he was well held and ended up kicking only 1.1. Running players Corry Bewick (WPFC’s star “recruit” for 1986) and Les Fong just crept into West Perth’s best players’ list at numbers five and six. The loss of Menaglio and other early-1980s star players such as David Palm and Peter Murnane were being keenly felt by West Perth in August 1986 with the tiny Les Fong even being named as ruck-rover for this game. Other strong performers in 1986 such as Brendon Bell and Darren Bewick obviously were simply swept aside in the Subiaco onslaught. As has been written elsewhere on this website, WPFC in 1986 had failed to satisfactorily plug holes in its defence caused by the exits of Graeme Comerford, John Duckworth, Geoff Hendriks, and Mick O’Brien. Noel Mugavin was now the full-back but he was simply the last one to retire of the old workhorses and at 30-years-of-age in 1986 he was not a good bet for the future. In the forward line the situation was as bad or even worse with no key-position players coming through to replace Rod Alderton and Brian Adamson (who last played in 1984) and Doug Simms (who last played in 1985). One or two new key-position forwards had been desperately needed to compliment Phil Bradmore. During 1986 the team played with no recognized full-forward and it was rare for any one player to score more than three goals per game. In this match Craig Nelson scored 3.1 (Nelson was a player certainly far below the Laurie Keene standard in front of goals despite the optimism of those at the club) and no other player scored more than two.

Ross Gibbs, Glenelg, 1985-86, badly missed by WP

The main problem at West Perth in 1986 was simply hubris and overconfidence from the administration, coach, and players. No recruits of note were added to the team from interstate or other clubs in 1986 and the juniors coming through were not of the quantity or quality to match clubs such as East Perth and South Fremantle (as can be seen from West Perth’s Round 19 loss to South Fremantle at Fremantle Oval). The dark years of 1990-92, when WPFC was last three years in a row, were coming up and I believe that 1986 marked the beginning of the downhill slide. The club was partly right to argue that its inner-city recruiting areas were drying up fast but this does not mean it should have ever left Leederville Oval. Like Subiaco has done (and Perth south of the river), it should have just claimed new recruitment areas in the far northern suburbs while keeping its traditional home ground. Supporters were extremely disappointed that the club could not improve on its fourth placing of 1985. The main reasons were injuries and a failure to recruit any name new recruits from interstate or other clubs. Meanwhile, WPFC fans had to endure the sight of Derek Kickett performing brilliantly at Claremont; David Hart succeeding as a rover at South Fremantle; and even Mick Rea against all the odds securing a second lease on life under Mal Brown at Perth and topping the season’s goal-kicking. All of these were ex-West Perth players and players who should have been retained. Further afield, Ross Gibbs achieved dual premiership medallions with Glenelg in the strong SANFL competition of 1985-86 and David Palm was exceeding all expectations in the centre position for Richmond (proving himself worthy of being included in the line of brilliant Richmond centremen from the recent past such as Geoff Raines and Maurice Rioli). [David Palm played 104 games for Richmond from 1983-88.]

Ross Gibbs marks for Glenelg v Port Adelaide

However, it may well be that West Perth simply did not put in the required effort or play with sufficient enthusiasm. This is hypothesis rather than fact. I did not attend this game. Christian made a somewhat strange comment in his match report which is difficult to interpret as follows: “But there was only enough fuel on board to maintain a luke-warm challenge after the initial burst of energy had been burnt up”. What exactly did he mean when he said West Perth did “not have enough fuel on board”? Was he politely hinting at a lack of effort and enthusiasm or did he mean lack of fitness and/or lack of ability? West Perth lost every quarter and nearly every position on the field. West Perth was given a final chance to make the final four in this game. Christian correctly wrote that the team gave the supporters not one glimmer of hope. David Marsh had previously claimed in The West Australian that the Round 19 loss to South Fremantle was the make-or-break game and yet West Perth’s Round 20 win over Claremont gave them yet another chance to make the final four. With an East Fremantle victory over Claremont fairly likely in Round 21, even at Claremont Oval, West Perth only had to beat Subiaco (and Claremont lose) for West Perth to scrape into the final four by two premiership points. The fact that a place in the final four was still up for grabs should have meant West Perth had sufficient motivation in this Round 21 match. Why did WPFC capitulate so badly in this game and at the tail end of the 1986 season? This is one of the key questions posed by the events of the dying days of the last WAFL season prior to the West Coast Eagles’ era (during which 90% of Western Australian football fans would no longer find such questions remotely interesting any longer). What was John Wynne’s relationship with the players like this late in the 1986 season? Wynne did not continue on in 1987. Overall, West Perth’s disappointing end to the 1986 season was a huge blow to the fans because the signing of John Wynne as coach before the 1985 season had raised expectations to a new higher level.

Haydn Bunton Junior - master-coach, respect!

Subiaco’s 1985-86 team proved itself to be one of the greatest WAFL teams produced in any era and the club could have won three premierships in a row to equal the achievement of Swan Distracts in 1982-84 had the advent of the VFL/AFL not ripped the heart out of the team. As has been written elsewhere on this website, Bunton and the club produced an amazing feat to win the 1988 premiership after so many devastating player losses had been sustained, and Todd Breman was a key element in that second premiership win. Sadly, the Bunton era fizzled out rather than ended with a bang as most Western Australian football fans devoted their attention primarily to the VFL/AFL competition after the formation of West Coast Eagles. Bunton’s achievement at Subiaco was every bit as great as the achievement of John Todd at Swan Districts. It was not Bunton’s fault that he lost over half of his starting 20 at the end of the 1986 season. The fact that after such enormous player losses the team could bounce to back to win the 1988 premiership says all that needs to be said about Bunton's excellence as a coach [by Kieran James, this version dated 27 January 2013].

Likely line-ups:

(Source: The West Australian, Saturday, 23 August 1986, p. 203)

Subiaco FC

Backs: Dawson, Brown, Crutchfield

Half-backs: P Lamb, Wilkinson, Sparks

Centres: Carpenter, Featherby, Dargie

Half-forwards: MacNish, Dean, Langdon

Forwards: O’Loughlin, Breman, Sells

Ruck: Keene, D Lamb, N Taylor

Interchange: Scott, Georgiades

In: Featherby, Crutchfield

Out: Willet, Zanotti

West Perth FC

Backs: Martin, Mugavin, Munns

Half-backs: Binder, Barns, Bell

Centres: D Bewick, Laidley, King

Half-forwards: Gastev, Bradmore, Warwick

Forwards: Nelson, Sadowski, Chaplin

Ruck: Foley, L Fong, C Bewick

Interchange: Collinge, Lill

In: Barns

Out: Mifka (jaw)

Match results - Saturday, 23 August, 1986, Subiaco Oval

Subiaco FC 4.5 13.9 22.14 27.17 (179) d West Perth FC 2.2 6.7 9.7 12.9 (81)

Scorers: S: Breman 10.1, Sells 4.5, Dean 4.4, Georgiades, MacNish 2.1, Langdon 1.2, P Lamb, Featherby 1.1, Scott, N Taylor 1.0, Keene 0.1.

WP: Nelson 3.1, Foley 2.1, Fong 2.0, Chaplin 1.2, Bradmore, Gastev, C Bewick 1.1, King 1.0, Lill 0.1, Forced 0.1.

Weather: Fine, light south-westerly breeze.

(Source: The West Australian, Monday, 25 August 1986, p. 96)

Attendance: 9,916 (from WAFL Online).

Free kicks: S: 9, 5, 6, 4 – 24.

WP: 5, 8, 6, 6 – 25.

Best players:

WA Footballer of the Year Award:

5 votes Todd Breman (Subiaco) – An immaculate 10-goal performance at full-forward where he gave an outstanding exhibition of straight and long kicking.

4 votes Dean Laidley (West Perth) – Battled hard, long and spiritedly in his team’s losing cause. Was continually under notice in the midfield.

3 votes Peter Featherby (Subiaco) – Another [conspicuous] performance in the middle. Had 31 kicks in a composed display of skill and stamina.

2 votes Phil Lamb (Subiaco) – Was prominent early on a half-back flank and then went to a wing where he continued in strong, hard-working form.

1 vote Laurie Keene (Subiaco) – Was the dominant ruckman. Wound up his best season in league football with another excellent all-round performance.

(Source: The West Australian, Monday, 25 August 1986, p. 96)

Team rankings: S: T Breman 1, P Featherby 2, P Lamb 3, L Keene 4, D Lamb 5, M Crutchfield 6.

WP: D Laidley 1, D Foley 2, C Barns 3, R Munns 4, C Bewick 5, L Fong 6.

(Source: The West Australian, Monday, 25 August 1986, p. 96)

Other Round 21 results:

South Fremantle 21.16 (142) d Swan Districts 12.12 (84), Fremantle Oval

East Perth 21.21 (147) d Perth 16.15 (111), Lathlain Park

East Fremantle 27.14 (176) d Claremont 13.11 (89), Claremont Oval

	Round 21	WAFL	Table	1986
	Played	Won	Lost	Drawn	%	Points
SUBIACO*	21	17	4	-	140.26	68
EAST FREM**	21	16	5	-	139.43	64
PERTH	21	12	8	1	98.77	50
CLAREMONT	21	10	11	-	110.44	40
West Perth	21	9	11	1	88.69	38
East Perth	21	7	14	-	87.10	28
South Frem	21	7	14	-	74.93	28
Swan Dist	19	5	16	-	82.87	20

(Source: The West Australian, Monday, 25 August 1986, p. 96)

*eventual 1986 WAFL premiers

**eventual 1986 WAFL runners-up

Leading goal-kickers after Round 21 (Top 9 players):

80 – Mick Rea (P)

72 – John Scott (C)

66 – Stephen Sells (S)

63 – Colin Waterson (EF)

57 – Brian Peake (EF)

52 – Warren Dean (S), Craig Edwards (SF)

50 – Wayne Ryder (P)

46 – Tony Buhagiar (EF)

Complete match report (full text):

By the late GEOFF CHRISTIAN:

“Subiaco coach Haydn Bunton’s continuing and imaginative search for the perfect goalkicking formula broke new ground on Saturday when he used Warren Dean, Todd Breman and Stephen Sells in close order across the full-forward line against West Perth at Subiaco Oval.

“This variation on the theme produced a formidable tally of 18.10, a major contribution to the 98-point victory on a day when Subiaco completed their preparation for the second semi-final by kicking 27.17 – their third-highest score of the season.

“To use Breman, Dean and Sells in concert as an attacking unit, Bunton deployed first-year players John Georgiades and Karl Langdon as half-forwards and made no use whatsoever of the considerable goal-kicking skills of ruckman Laurie Keene who was rested in defence.

“A year ago, Keene was Subiaco’s No. 1 goalkicker but he was not missed in attack on Saturday as Breman (10.1), Sells (4.5) and Dean (4.4) went on a goalscoring spree for which West Perth had neither the required individual ability nor the overall defensive technique to counter.

“It was 21 weeks ago that Breman was the full-forward in the reserves against East Fremantle on the opening day of the season when he scored six goals and first drew attention to his potential as a goal scorer.

“That potential now has been confirmed after Breman gave the best goalkicking performance for Subiaco since Keene kicked 9.0 against Swan Districts on April 27 last year. It was the first double-figure tally for the Lions since the days of Austin Robertson.

“Robertson had no greater admirer as a full-forward than Bunton. And there were features of Breman’s display on Saturday that were strongly reminiscent of Subiaco’s former master of the goalkicking art.

“Breman’s ultra-fast and well-timed leads were pure Robertson and so was his accuracy with the drop punt, though he has the capacity to kick longer (and sometimes longer than required) – but with less concentration.

“And Subiaco showed a willingness and impressive ability to get the ball to a man who has arrived at full-forward this year via the half-back flank and the wing – an unusual and circuitous route.

“This was an impeccable display from Breman, though he can expect far closer and tougher attention in the second semi-final than he received on Saturday.

“[Warren] Dean, Subiaco’s irregular centre-half-forward, played like a man coming back to form and maybe to centre-half-forward, though his kicking lacked the precision he achieved mid-season.

“[Stephen] Sells, unorthodox, unpredictable and unreliable on Saturday when kicking for goal inside the square, again revealed his uncanny and refreshing knack of ending up with the difficult ball.

“When Keene dominates the ruck, centreman Peter Featherby has 31 kicks, rovers Neil Taylor and Glen O’Loughlin come back to form and ruck-rover Dwayne Lamb is a winner, Subiaco’s forward[s] are apt not to lack opportunity.

“And when the defence, led by full-back Clinton Brown and the dashing half-backs Michael Crutchfield and Mark Zanotti, plays with authority the opposition finds it hard to score.

“That is how it worked out for West Perth, who failed to come to grips with the competitive challenge on Saturday and did not give their fans a hope of victory and the opportunity of qualifying for the first semi-final.

“Centreman Dean Laidley set the standard for spirit, perseverance and performance in this West Perth team that started full of spirit in the first 20min. But there was only enough fuel on board to maintain a luke-warm challenge after the initial burst of energy had been burnt up.

“West Perth were too spasmodic on the ball and their team play suffered badly in the face of fast, effective and frequent Subiaco tackling”.

(Source: Geoff Christian (1986), “Lions thrive on new tactic in attack”, The West Australian, Monday, 25 August 1986, p. 96)

Second article by GEOFF CHRISTIAN (selected quote):

“Claremont and Perth lost by a combined margin of 123 points on Saturday, hardly the type of form required to produce an inspiring [first] semi-final clash” (page 96).

(Source: Geoff Christian (1986), “Perth likely to recall Stasinowsky”, The West Australian, Monday, 25 August 1986, pp. 96, 100)

[archival research by Kieran James].

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).