The comp is super even.
As @Paul_Peos pointed out in a different thread, there are many ways to skin a cat.
Start well, win the close games, preferably make the top 4 & have a crack from there.
If we manage to have a good trade period and reinforce our midfield, there are no excuses in 2019 if we aren’t challenging for a flag.
That and not guarding the mark, and encroaching as soon as the ump calls play on. Drives me nuts how much time and space we give.
Was Richmond being mindful as they choked against the Pies?
SA cared alright. Cared that much that they wanted to be part of a proper national competition, not a hybrid VFL. The WAFL did also but weren’t as successful at reining in a group of rogue business people who saw that $$$ could be made. It was the 80’s after all and no state embraced making money at the expense of everything else like we did.
Shame because it could have been a genuinely national competition.
Within 12 months, the SANFL had conceded that the horse had indeed bolted so spent 88 + 89 preparing for their inevitable entry into the expanded VFL. The VFL assisted in this endeavour by changing the name of the VFL to AFL in order for our South Australian friends to save face.
The opportunity was lost.
“Let them eat cake”… And we have been eating it ever since.
After watching Bulldogs and Richmond win premierships. I was pretty angry with our club. Those 2 clubs had no right to be winning Premierships, yet we couldn’t even win a final.
Jealousy yesterday? No not really.
But I think comparing ourselves to West Coast is important.
They’re generally a pretty successful modern era team. They bounce up and down the ladder. They never have long periods of time sitting on the bottom. But quickly jump back up to the top 4 consistently.
The supporters and the board at West Coast demand success. A bad season isn’t acceptable. There is no excuses about bad seasons. The pressure is on to get back up, or there will be sackings immanent.
EFC on the other hand, tell supporters to be patient. The club makes excuses about ‘transition periods’ etc. The club gets ratty at the supporters and media for demanding better performances. Yet we don’t see the relentlessness and expectations that anything but a Premiership is unacceptable.
West Coast are a big club. And the pressure is on them to succeed every season is immense.
So you mean the 2009-2015 period where we used our first picks on Myers, Melksham, Kav, Heppell, JD, Zerrett, Langford and Parish was the period we didn’t focus on mids?
Collingwood, like any team can have a really good day, especially when no one expects them to win, Richmond were by far the most consistent side in 2018, but with both Dusty and Astbury unfit and playing the Tiges were a lot more vulnerable than usual.
Mindfulness can help players keep focused but it doesn’t overcome key players playing injured or with illness.
Martin and Astbury didn’t lose it for them, although it didn’t help. First half goal kicking and dropping their head did.
Reading this thread from the past 9 days, I’m stunned by the general assumption that Collingwood would win. Why weren’t WCE considered favourites?
I was referring to a lack of midfield support for Jobe (in his prime) & said ‘2012 & earlier’ & ‘gun mids’. Only Heppell is therefore relevant to my point.
A true national league would have been, I think, impossible to sell to the public.
The public would have accepted it over the winding up of the VFL.
The South Australians knew it.
The WAFL knew it too but couldn’t control a private entity outside of it’s jurisdiction buying a licence from the VFL. The VFL would have accepted the $4m in loose change they were that desperate.
The Solvent VFL clubs survive, the insolvent clubs should have been wound up.
There would have been heartache for some. Heartbreak for lots actually but instead of the pain being shared across all the major state codes, the VFL had it’s cake and ate it, too.
Our comps were ruined. 100+ year old viable competitions ruined overnight.
Essendon would have lived. Same with Carlton, Collingwood and Richmond. A couple more as well. It wouldn’t have been too far removed from what we have today but it would have been closer to the 12x team competition, play each other twice, home and away with the GF played at the MCG arrangement that most agree is the the ideal set-up.
I really think it would have been a bloodbath with not even a better than average chance of success.
The only three solvent clubs at the end of the ‘86 season were Essendon, Carlton, Hawthorn. The other eight clubs were financially stuffed - with combined debts of $7m (Pies had declared a $2.9m loss). The millions that the VFL received from private interests from WA & Queensland is the only reason the VFL survived. They were goneski, otherwise.
Probably but it needed to happen.
The VFL were right to be interested only in their own wellbeing. It’s what football clubs and football competitions have been doing since the beginning but I can’t help but be disappointed in what could have been had the VFL not found a willing accomplice in WA in 1986. The good people of the Brisbane bid can’t be held accountable as they were so naive in their acceptance of the terms and conditions on their entering of the VFL in 1987, they forgot to read the fine print on what sort of deal the other teams were willing to give them in order for them to participate. And it cost the $4m. Suckers… But we should have been more savvy over here. We were a sophisticated and mature football region after-all.
And interestingly, only Essendon, Hawthorn, Melbourne & Collingwood voted against the WA & Queensland teams joining the VFL in ‘87.
You’re probably not aware of this but West Coast’s 1st game in the VFL was at Subiaco Oval against Richmond. Apart from the result, which was a stunning 5+ goal 3/4 time turnaround to over run the Tiges in the last, the game itself was the curtain-raiser to the WAFL game later in the afternoon.
West Coast V Richmond as the curtain raiser to the WAFL game later.
What happened after the final siren is what I remember most. 1000’s of spectators leaving with only a couple of thousand hanging around to watch (I think) Subiaco V West Perth.
And that was it. The future had arrived. The VFL had done more damage in that one afternoon than they had inflicted collectively on every losing WA state side in every state of origin game collectively.
Some saw it coming. Lots saw it coming actually but if they held their nerve, the VFL would have been forced to compromise rather than continue along in its current form.
The WAFL and SANFL should have stood firm together. One of them held their nerve at least.
Painful for sure but it should have happened.
It’s simply survival of the fittest Diggers, and the VFL was fitter.
I also was about 6 at the time, know next to nothing about it all and am enjoying your take on it.
Not really.
They were insolvent.
The others missed the chance to force them into change but lacked the vision or stones or both to do it.