News Media Thread, 2024: Insightful, Inciteful and Incomptent

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Ambrose Burnside said:
Whole drama would have been avoided if we didn't draft that spud Brander and went Allen/Kelly with our first two picks.

Oh well.
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Except that noone rated Allen that highly and when we were loosely linked to taking him at our first people on here were flipping tables. Along with the suggestion taking Liam Ryan before the 4th round would be reaching
 

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Ambrose Burnside said:
Meh, nuffies on here flip tables all the time, shouldn't influence drafting decisions.
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I wasn't suggesting it does influence our drafting decisions. I'm saying for the initial TK oversight and Brander turning out to be a squib despite being the more highly rated tall, we ended up doing well picking up Allen where we did, and getting Ryan.
 
DanWCE said:
Except that noone rated Allen that highly and when we were loosely linked to taking him at our first people on here were flipping tables. Along with the suggestion taking Liam Ryan before the 4th round would be reaching
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I’ll put my hand up and say I wanted a small with our first pick (Higgins was my pick) and after we went Brander I absolutely didn’t want another tall with our next pick (but would have gone Fogarty, I didn’t want to take a ~25 year old Kelly that high). And I didn’t want Ryan at 26 either.

So basically I would have botched that draft badly.
 
WCErevival said:
Why do none of the journos talk about our rubbish draft hand last year? We should get a priority pick just to make up for it.
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There was a fair amount of talk about it just after the draft happened. I presume they were told to shut it down by AFL HQ...
 
bzparkes said:
There was a fair amount of talk about it just after the draft happened. I presume they were told to shut it down by AFL HQ...
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My recollection was that there was plenty of talk about how long the first round was but little on how it impacted our R2 pick
 
mad_eagle said:
That was all Duff wasn’t it? I don’t remember any Victorian media bringing it up
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They brought it up pre draft. It was along the lines of "Sucks to be West Coast. However, if they want more picks, split pick one for 3 late firsts or trade Darling/Gov/Gaff/Yeo for magic beans"

Campaigners like that Ginger Git (who swore Harley didn't want to come here) have continued on with it, blaming us for the lack for draft picks as we didn't split pick 1.
 

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Convocation said:
You could call it football’s equivalent of a perfect storm. You could call it bad luck, bad management or a combination of both.

But whatever you choose to call it, West Coast’s Eagles plummet from a 2018 premiership to a 2023 wooden spoon and a start to 2024 so poor that sentiment is growing for them to get priority draft picks is an extraordinary tale of miscalculation, misadventure and misfortune.

There was the miscalculation of what they could gain from the trade to get Tim Kelly to the club and by way of extension what they could afford to pay for him.

There was the misadventure of Willie Rioli, a premiership star in 2018 but a Port Adelaide player by 2023 with a two year WADA drug infraction extension in between.

There was the misfortune of a frightening injury suffered by promising youngster Daniel Venables in 2019 which ended his career. And then there are the frustrating runs of injuries – the ones that eventually ended the careers of Luke Shuey, Brad Sheppard and Nic Naitanui and the ones that have severely limited the impacts of Elliot Yeo, Jeremy McGovern and Oscar Allen over the past four seasons.

West Coast have now won just five of the club’s last 52 games at a rate of less than a win every 10 games.

There was always a distracting reason to think it might not be as bad as it has now been revealed to be.

In 2022 it was Covid and a significant amount of injury that derailed them. In 2023 it was injury and it was probably injury only that provided sufficient mitigation factor to save coach Adam Simpson’s job, even though he has two years of a contract remaining.

Simpson told Fox Footy last week that he now had sufficient player availability for people to be able to legitimately judge him on his coaching.

It is a comment made against the perspective of the carnage of recent seasons because while Simpson now has up to a dozen players playing in the WAFL to put pressure on his AFL team – he is still without his co-captain Oscar Allen for two months and his ruck recruit Matt Flynn for at least another month.

His 2020 All-Australian forward Liam Ryan, his first round draft pick from 2022 Elijah Hewett and his 2018 grand final matchwinner Dom Sheed are others yet to play this year.

This is West Coast’s five year road to ruin, a path never before trodden by one of the AFL’s most powerful and successful clubs.

It will take it to a fourth September in a row without finals, a list that has the reputation of being the league worst by some margin. And if the opening three weeks of this season are anything to go on – the Eagles may not have hit rock bottom yet.

May 17 2019: West Coast’s Daniel Venables gets cleaned up in a frightening mid-air collision with Melbourne’s Tim Smith and teammate Nathan Vardy in a round 9 clash at Optus Stadium. Venables, pick 13 in the 2016 National Draft was 20 years old, had played 21 games including the 2018 grand final. He was expected to graduate into the midfield. He never played again.

September 12 2019: West Coast arrive in Melbourne for their semi final clash with Geelong and are told forward Willie Rioli has been charged with a doping infraction for tampering with a urine sample. Rioli is later found guilty of tampering with a sample twice. The 2018 Premiership star, 25 at the time is suspended for two years and misses all of the 2020 and 2021 seasons. He plays 13 games in West Coast’s Covid ravaged 2022 season and asks to be traded to Port Adelaide.

October 9 2019: West Coast clinches the trade deal to bring Tim Kelly back to Perth from Geelong. The Eagles gave up pick 14, a future first round (pick 18 in 2020), picks 24 and 37 for Kelly while they got pick 52 and a future third round pick in return. The draft index values the cost of Kelly as higher than pick two in the draft. WA products Mitch Georgiades, Trent Rivers and Chad Warner are available at the 2019 picks the Eagles give up but Kelly is traded in on a $800,000 a year six year deal to be the cream on the cake of a midfield that includes Elliot Yeo, Luke Shuey, Jack Redden, Andrew Gaff and star ruckman Nic Naitanui.

July 4 2020: The cake Kelly was recruited to be the cream on top of begins to collapse. Luke Shuey suffers a hamstring injury against Sydney in round five at Carrara. It will be the beginning of the end for the 2018 Norm Smith Medallist who was made captain at the end of the 2019 season. He will be plagued by hamstring and calf muscle concerns for the rest of his career and will play just 47 of 85 games between the start of 2020 and the end of 2023 before announcing his retirement.

July 19 2020: Defender Jeremy McGovern suffers a broken thumb in the round seven Western Derby win over Fremantle. He will miss five games and the injury will bother him for the rest of the season. It is the start of a run of various injuries for McGovern who suffers rib, hip, back and hamstring concerns over the coming seasons. McGovern will play just 46 of 85 games between the start of 2020 and the end of 2023.

August 9 2020: Elliot Yeo plays his last game of the season for the Eagles in round 11 against Carlton. Yeo has been battling Osteitis Pubis for most of the Covid interrupted season. The cake continues to crumble. Between the start of 2020 and the end of 2023 Yeo plays 37 of 85 games for the Eagles and is rarely fully fit in the games he does play.

Summer 2021-2022: Defender Brad Sheppard is forced into retirement due to concussion concerns at the age of 30 after 216 games. Sheppard, who missed the 2018 grand final with a torn hamstring, was a 2020 All-Australian, a 2019 All-Australian nominee and twice third in the Eagles best and fairest.

Summer 2022: Forward Oscar Allen suffers a foot injury leading into match practice for the 2022 season. He misses the entire year.

First round draft pick Campbell Chesser suffers a foot injury in the opening minutes of the first interclub practice match against Fremantle. He also misses the entire season. Grand final match winner Dom Sheed gets his ankle caught beneath him in the Fremantle practice match. He plays one game for the season.

2022: After the WA border shut down during the pandemic both West Australian clubs are vulnerable to Covid outbreaks. Fremantle manages to control the outbreaks within reason but the virus goes through West Coast like a hot knife through butter. By round two the Eagles are forced to play four players from AFL created Covid contingency top up lists to put a team on the park. They are forced to dig into the top up list once more before the season is over. At the end of the season no Eagle has played all games and only six have missed fewer than four matches. The Eagles, making at least half a dozen changes through either Covid or injury from match to match, win just two games and champion forward Josh Kennedy retires at season’s end.

2023: Ruck champion, two time best and fairest and three time All-Australian Nic Naitanui is sidelined with an achilles tendon problem before round one and does not play a game all season. The Eagles season falls apart in the round three western derby when five players: McGovern, Shuey, Jamie Cripps, Liam Ryan and Chesser all go down with injuries. Ryan has not played at AFL level since. McGovern plays only nine games while Yeo and Shuey play 10 each and Cripps plays 12 times. Premiership captain Shannon Hurn, successor Shuey and Naitanui all retire at the end of the season. The Eagles win only three games and win the club’s second wooden spoon.

2024: Sheed suffers a stress reaction in his foot and is yet to play a game. First round draft pick Elijah Hewett is diagnosed with sesamoiditis in both feet and is told he needs surgery in one foot. He will miss most of the season. Ruck recruit Matt Flynn and forward Ryan go down with significant pre-season hamstring injuries and are yet to play a game. Allen goes for scans after knee swelling following round one and is told he will miss eight to 10 weeks with significant bone bruising. The Eagles lose their first three matches by more than 50 points and go goalless for at least two quarters in round two against GWS and round three against the Western Bulldogs.
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Great summary but I think simply put it's

Venables
Brander
Sheppard
Rioli

+ Absurd/incompetent injury/fitness management.

That's the difference between us being 15-18 bad and all time bad. There was always a cliff but that's the difference between a slow slide into mediocrity and a crash into whatever this is.
 
Ishmael_ said:
Great summary but I think simply put it's

Venables
Brander
Sheppard
Rioli

+ Absurd/incompetent injury/fitness management.

That's the difference between us being 15-18 bad and all time bad. There was always a cliff but that's the difference between a slow slide into mediocrity and a crash into whatever this is.
Click to expand...
Cameron bailing didn’t help our rebuild either…
 

Moneyball AFL trade news: Eagles’ draft assistance play, star Swans set to cash in​

The Eagles’ poor start to 2024 has prompted calls for draft assistance, but will the club cave? Plus, a Magpie has pushed his contract talks while two Swans are set to get paid in the latest AFL trade news.

Jon Ralph and Glenn McFarlane

On face value, no team has ever deserved draft assistance less than West Coast.
But as AFL greats including Gerard Healy make clear the Eagles deserve an AFL-approved draft package, West Coast will wait until later in the year to consider whether to make such a request.

And the AFL will have the same impossible conundrum it has been confronted with over Gold Coast and North Melbourne draft packages – how much do you reward a club’s ineptitude?

But Gold Coast received four additional picks in late 2019 after being routed as an expansion club (they lost co-captains Steven May and Tom Lynch) and winning only 23 games across five seasons.

North Melbourne secured three extra end-of-first-round picks in 2023 after winning only 12 games across four years.

West Coast is a very different proposition given it won the premiership in 2018, played finals in 2020 and was in the eight for all but three rounds in 2021, ultimately winning 10 games.

Teams which haven’t won a flag since 2018 would be in uproar if the Eagles were handed extra picks.

Those teams include Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton, Essendon, Fremantle, Greater Western Sydney, Gold Coast, Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, St Kilda, Sydney and the Western Bulldogs.

Hawthorn, Adelaide, North Melbourne and Gold Coast haven’t even played finals since West Coast’s most recent September berth in 2021.

Those clubs would revolt, with Geelong one club who behind the scenes believes the AFL works too hard to ignore the fact this is a competition and not football socialism where everyone is as even as possible.

One option is a watered down package of future picks of the manner the Roos received in 2022 – future second and third-round picks that helped them secure Griffin Logue.

It was only in the following year after another terrible season the Roos got those three end-of-first-round picks.

It is on record that West Coast bungled its Covid experience, re-signed stars long-term at inflated prices who had terrible injury histories and did not keep up to date with modern game trends.

They also traded a trio of quality picks for Tim Kelly just as their flag window was ending.

But the only factor in their favour will be the AFL’s desire for a competitive TV deal as Tasmania prepares to enter the league.

Punishing West Coast also punishes the AFL because it makes one of the AFL’s nine games each weekend a marketing nightmare.
 
Convocation said:

Moneyball AFL trade news: Eagles’ draft assistance play, star Swans set to cash in​

The Eagles’ poor start to 2024 has prompted calls for draft assistance, but will the club cave? Plus, a Magpie has pushed his contract talks while two Swans are set to get paid in the latest AFL trade news.

Jon Ralph and Glenn McFarlane

On face value, no team has ever deserved draft assistance less than West Coast.
But as AFL greats including Gerard Healy make clear the Eagles deserve an AFL-approved draft package, West Coast will wait until later in the year to consider whether to make such a request.

And the AFL will have the same impossible conundrum it has been confronted with over Gold Coast and North Melbourne draft packages – how much do you reward a club’s ineptitude?

But Gold Coast received four additional picks in late 2019 after being routed as an expansion club (they lost co-captains Steven May and Tom Lynch) and winning only 23 games across five seasons.

North Melbourne secured three extra end-of-first-round picks in 2023 after winning only 12 games across four years.

West Coast is a very different proposition given it won the premiership in 2018, played finals in 2020 and was in the eight for all but three rounds in 2021, ultimately winning 10 games.

Teams which haven’t won a flag since 2018 would be in uproar if the Eagles were handed extra picks.

Those teams include Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton, Essendon, Fremantle, Greater Western Sydney, Gold Coast, Hawthorn, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, St Kilda, Sydney and the Western Bulldogs.

Hawthorn, Adelaide, North Melbourne and Gold Coast haven’t even played finals since West Coast’s most recent September berth in 2021.

Those clubs would revolt, with Geelong one club who behind the scenes believes the AFL works too hard to ignore the fact this is a competition and not football socialism where everyone is as even as possible.

One option is a watered down package of future picks of the manner the Roos received in 2022 – future second and third-round picks that helped them secure Griffin Logue.

It was only in the following year after another terrible season the Roos got those three end-of-first-round picks.

It is on record that West Coast bungled its Covid experience, re-signed stars long-term at inflated prices who had terrible injury histories and did not keep up to date with modern game trends.

They also traded a trio of quality picks for Tim Kelly just as their flag window was ending.

But the only factor in their favour will be the AFL’s desire for a competitive TV deal as Tasmania prepares to enter the league.

Punishing West Coast also punishes the AFL because it makes one of the AFL’s nine games each weekend a marketing nightmare.
Click to expand...

Like how they're against socialism when it comes to WC receiving assistance

None of the Vic clubs seem to mind it at all when it comes to keeping them afloat
 
Mark Stone talking about the Eagles at the 8:10 mark on-wards. Honest thoughts from a guy who understands the game better then most.

omny.fm

Stone Cold Stats Round Three - Wide World of Sports 6PR

Mark Stone was back tonight for his regular segment talking us through our West Australian teams, their performances in Round three and their opponents at Gather Round.
omny.fm omny.fm
 
I as a norf informer say "no team has ever deserved draft assistance less than West Coast."

"But as AFL greats including Gerard Healy make clear the Eagles deserve an AFL-approved draft package" me sad
 
Miguel Sanchez said:
WTF? How on earth does he justify that statement?
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By saying we were inside the eight for all of three rounds in 2021, just three seasons ago, and four clubs haven't even played finals since that time. Plus the flag in 2018. In theory, he's not wrong, I like the comment that it's supposed to be a competition, not football socialism.

The problem is they made it football socialism and we paid a hefty price at last year's draft. I would view any priority picks as compensation for screwing us at the 2023 draft, not assistance.
 

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News Media Thread, 2024: Insightful, Inciteful and Incomptent

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