Coach NEW HEAD COACH - Welcome to West Coast: Andrew McQualter

[PremiershipNo4]

This kind of relates to that topic of Schofield -
(from the Big Questions on WCE 2025 season from Mongrel Punt)

7 – DOES IT HURT JUST A LITTLE TO SEE JACK DARLING PLAY HIS 300TH IN DIFFERENT COLOURS?

Yeah, a little, but at this point in his career, most had jumped off the Darling bandwagon. That was a shame, because he did a lot of heavy lifting for this club over a long period of time.
Sure, it is easy to focus on the moments where he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory, but when he went down with an ankle injury during the 2018 season, he was arguably the best player in the competition at that point. That’s the Jack Darling that West Coast supporters should remember, and it is a shame that he’ll be running out for game 300 wearing North Melbourne colours.

This may not sit well with some, but anyway… Jarrad Schofield coming in and “making a statement” by dropping Darling likely cost him the chance to run out for game 300 in West Coast colours. For a bloke in an interim role to do that, even if he was auditioning for the top job, demonstrated a lack of foresight.

Do you think, had Darling played his 300th last season, he would have gone on for another year at North? Or do you think that with 300 games under his belt, the time would have been right to walk away?

Maybe he wanted more and thought he had more to offer, but being sent off in front of an Optus Stadium crowd, in game 300… it would have been a good way to go out.

Sure, we can look at the situation through the lens of the interim coach. He needed to get something out of his team, and with Darling in the twilight of his career, he was an easy target. Drop him… make a statement.
And now he’s out of there. Both of them are.

Great statement.

I often see this in the work I do. Someone comes in, attempts to implement three or four new ideas to impress someone further up the chain, and then… they’re gone. Off to another job, and they leave behind them the mess. I am sure Schofield had the best of intentions, and maybe thought he could be the man to lead the Eagles into 2025 and back to glory, but his statement left a premiership player two games short of 300, and that type of thing only makes one sort of statement.

And it’s not a good one.

It may be intended to draw a line in the sand in terms of performance, but when you take a club great, and despite his detractors, 298 games and 500+ goals is a GREAT career, and kick him to the curb, it may not be the statement you intended. And it may not be something that holds you in good stead, going forward.

Home - The Mongrel Punt

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The fact is JD should have been dropped much earlier than he was, it was Simpson that should have swung that axe, but he refused to do it.
Schofield and the selection committee 100% did the right thing, as evidenced by Darlings performance at AFL after being dropped, he responded positively to the kick up the arse, before settling back into an apathetic attitude, hence why we didn’t chase his signature.

 

[Ambrose Burnside]

Darling pretty much personifies our post-2018 fall. Was great in 2019, but then came the whole ovaries thing, then just went through the motions until Schofield dropped him.

Needed so much more from a senior player.

It's an issue, our senior players like Darling and Kelly just don't have any leadership skills.

 

[WCErevival]

Games played is such an insignificant stat. No one cares about your longevity, they care about what you achieved. Compare Judd to Boomer Harvey for instance.

 

[EagleMan87]

Games played is such an insignificant stat. No one cares about your longevity, they care about what you achieved. Compare Judd to Boomer Harvey for instance.

It only matters if you didn't accomplish anything of note ('premiership player', 'club captain', '5x AA'). Plus, AFL Life Membership counts pre-season matches, so he'd be eligible even without reaching 300 official AFL games.