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Following on from his interview with Nisbett, Mark Duffield writes about the potential fallout of another poor season in 2023.
He makes some valid points
Those not familiar with long-time West Coast CEO Trevor Nisbett were probably surprised by his confident predictions on West Coast’s fortunes over the next two seasons.
Others who know Nisbett would not have been surprised at all.
The man once dubbed “Kung Fu Panda” by AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is a fierce defender of his tribe and an equally fierce believer that, in football, stability usually prevails over constant change.
The philosophy hangs heavy in the air at West Coast and always has.
When Adam Simpson first arrived at the club ahead of the 2014 season he declared the number of long-term employees around the club a great asset. It represented, he said, an enormous bank of knowledge and experience built over time that was far more likely to be a positive than a negative.
This has usually held true at West Coast, who have played finals in 25 of 36 completed seasons in the AFL for seven grand finals and four premierships. But the theory has never faced a bigger test than in 2023 as West Coast attempts to rebound from its worst ever season from a win-loss perspective and its second worst from a ladder position perspective.
In a recent conversation, Nisbett quipped that if the Eagles didn’t improve in 2023 I would be having the conversation with a different person in 12 months time.
He was only half joking.
Having survived a couple of career scrapes himself, and with Simpson preparing for a 10th season at the helm, he knows the two biggest targets after a second dismal year would be the CEO and the coach.
West Coast have never missed the finals for more than three years in a row. The “drought”, if you could call it that, came between 2008 and 2010 when off-field scandal cut short a period of contention under coach John Worsfold.
Favourite son Ben Cousins was sacked by the club and deregistered by the AFL.
Other Eagles were moved on more quietly.
Over the next three years, the Eagles underwent a revolution of sorts. It was cultural and the board, led by then chairman Mark Barnaba, directed and empowered Nisbett to reposition the club in the community and remind the players of their responsibilities within that space.
How players behaved became more important than how they performed and the club’s only wooden spoon came in 2010.
That season is the nearest thing we have seen to the on-field nadir the Eagles hit last year.
It was a period in which the club’s board reappointed Nisbett and was criticised for doing so. It was also widely assumed that coach John Worsfold’s tenure was on life support.
In 2010 the Eagles won four games, lost 18 and more than half the losses were by more than five goals, six of them by more than 40 points.
But Nisbett survived and endured and Worsfold took the team back to a preliminary final in 2011 and finals in 2012, before the board called time on him after missing finals in 2013.
West Coast have had the happy knack of bouncing back quicker than people expected. But, while it is impossible to accurately gauge the full impact that Covid-19 and injury had on the Eagles in 2022, the required bounce back this time feels bigger and less likely from a two-win season when ten games were lost by more than 50 points, including seven games in a row between rounds five and 11.
On one hand, it would take bad luck of biblical proportions for West Coast to have as much go wrong in 2023 as it did last season.
The Eagles played 47 players over the course of the season. They had to tap into their Covid-19 contingency top-up list several times. Their WAFL team forfeited games and others had to be rescheduled because they could not field a team.
If they couldn’t put a team on the field in the WAFL, they could not get their senior players on the field in the AFL. Jeremy McGovern missed 12 games, Nic Naitanui missed 14 and played injured in others. Elliot Yeo missed 17, Dom Sheed played just once, Oscar Allen and Tom Cole didn’t play at all and neither did highly-touted first round draft pick Campbell Chesser.
At the experienced end of the Eagles list, if you take out the retired Kennedy and Jack Redden, concussion casualties Daniel Venables, Brad Sheppard and Junior Rioli, the names are the same.
Unfortunately, the birth certificates are still the same, too.
Shannon Hurn turns 35 this year, Andrew Gaff turns 31, Luke Shuey 33, Naitanui turns 33 and has bad knees, Jeremy McGovern turns 31 and has hip/back concerns, Yeo is younger and won’t turn 30 until after the season but has played only 27 of the club’s last 62 games.
Age isn’t everything. Geelong were old but brilliant in winning the flag last year. And stability does count for something, as indicated by the misadventures at Richmond between 1982 and 2016 which account for 12 coaches, nine presidents and eight CEOs.
President Peggy O’Neal, chief executive Brendon Gale and the Richmond board made the three flags of recent seasons possible when they held their ground in the face of more unrest after an unsuccessful 2016, stuck with coach Damien Hardwick and finally found order and success from among chaos.
But there is also a case to argue stability, which abbreviates stable ability, at some point reverts to being the beginning of stale.
This is a watershed year for the Kung Fu Panda and his tribe.
He makes some valid points
West Coast Eagles have always opted for stability over change, but another season like 2022 will leave the board with little choice
Those not familiar with long-time West Coast CEO Trevor Nisbett were probably surprised by his confident predictions on West Coast’s fortunes over the next two seasons.
Others who know Nisbett would not have been surprised at all.
The man once dubbed “Kung Fu Panda” by AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan is a fierce defender of his tribe and an equally fierce believer that, in football, stability usually prevails over constant change.
The philosophy hangs heavy in the air at West Coast and always has.
When Adam Simpson first arrived at the club ahead of the 2014 season he declared the number of long-term employees around the club a great asset. It represented, he said, an enormous bank of knowledge and experience built over time that was far more likely to be a positive than a negative.
This has usually held true at West Coast, who have played finals in 25 of 36 completed seasons in the AFL for seven grand finals and four premierships. But the theory has never faced a bigger test than in 2023 as West Coast attempts to rebound from its worst ever season from a win-loss perspective and its second worst from a ladder position perspective.
In a recent conversation, Nisbett quipped that if the Eagles didn’t improve in 2023 I would be having the conversation with a different person in 12 months time.
He was only half joking.
Having survived a couple of career scrapes himself, and with Simpson preparing for a 10th season at the helm, he knows the two biggest targets after a second dismal year would be the CEO and the coach.
West Coast have never missed the finals for more than three years in a row. The “drought”, if you could call it that, came between 2008 and 2010 when off-field scandal cut short a period of contention under coach John Worsfold.
Favourite son Ben Cousins was sacked by the club and deregistered by the AFL.
Other Eagles were moved on more quietly.
Over the next three years, the Eagles underwent a revolution of sorts. It was cultural and the board, led by then chairman Mark Barnaba, directed and empowered Nisbett to reposition the club in the community and remind the players of their responsibilities within that space.
How players behaved became more important than how they performed and the club’s only wooden spoon came in 2010.
That season is the nearest thing we have seen to the on-field nadir the Eagles hit last year.
It was a period in which the club’s board reappointed Nisbett and was criticised for doing so. It was also widely assumed that coach John Worsfold’s tenure was on life support.
In 2010 the Eagles won four games, lost 18 and more than half the losses were by more than five goals, six of them by more than 40 points.
But Nisbett survived and endured and Worsfold took the team back to a preliminary final in 2011 and finals in 2012, before the board called time on him after missing finals in 2013.
West Coast have had the happy knack of bouncing back quicker than people expected. But, while it is impossible to accurately gauge the full impact that Covid-19 and injury had on the Eagles in 2022, the required bounce back this time feels bigger and less likely from a two-win season when ten games were lost by more than 50 points, including seven games in a row between rounds five and 11.
On one hand, it would take bad luck of biblical proportions for West Coast to have as much go wrong in 2023 as it did last season.
The Eagles played 47 players over the course of the season. They had to tap into their Covid-19 contingency top-up list several times. Their WAFL team forfeited games and others had to be rescheduled because they could not field a team.
If they couldn’t put a team on the field in the WAFL, they could not get their senior players on the field in the AFL. Jeremy McGovern missed 12 games, Nic Naitanui missed 14 and played injured in others. Elliot Yeo missed 17, Dom Sheed played just once, Oscar Allen and Tom Cole didn’t play at all and neither did highly-touted first round draft pick Campbell Chesser.
At the experienced end of the Eagles list, if you take out the retired Kennedy and Jack Redden, concussion casualties Daniel Venables, Brad Sheppard and Junior Rioli, the names are the same.
Unfortunately, the birth certificates are still the same, too.
Shannon Hurn turns 35 this year, Andrew Gaff turns 31, Luke Shuey 33, Naitanui turns 33 and has bad knees, Jeremy McGovern turns 31 and has hip/back concerns, Yeo is younger and won’t turn 30 until after the season but has played only 27 of the club’s last 62 games.
Age isn’t everything. Geelong were old but brilliant in winning the flag last year. And stability does count for something, as indicated by the misadventures at Richmond between 1982 and 2016 which account for 12 coaches, nine presidents and eight CEOs.
President Peggy O’Neal, chief executive Brendon Gale and the Richmond board made the three flags of recent seasons possible when they held their ground in the face of more unrest after an unsuccessful 2016, stuck with coach Damien Hardwick and finally found order and success from among chaos.
But there is also a case to argue stability, which abbreviates stable ability, at some point reverts to being the beginning of stale.
This is a watershed year for the Kung Fu Panda and his tribe.
... cringe!
