Affiliated: VFL 1987-89; AFL 1990-present

Club Address: Subiaco Oval, Subiaco Road, Subiaco, Western Australia 6008 

Postal Address: PO Box 508, Subiaco, Western Australia 6904

Home Ground: Subiaco Oval

Formed: 1986 

Colours: Home - Navy, gold and white; Alternative - Navy, light blue, gold, orange and white

Emblem: Eagles

V/AFL Premierships: 1992, 1994 & 2006 (3 total)  OTHER PREMIERSHIPS - Dr. Wm. C. McClelland Trophy 2006 (1 total) 

Brownlow Medallists: Chris Judd 2004; Ben Cousins 2005 (2 total)

Norm Smith Medallists: Peter Matera 1992; Dean Kemp 1994; Chris Judd 2005; Andrew Embley 2006 (4 total)

All Australians: Phil Narkle 1987; Steve Malaxos 1988 (2 total)

AFL All Australians: Guy McKenna 1991, 1993 & 1994; Chris Mainwaring 1991 & 1996; Peter Matera 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996 & 1997; Craig Turley 1991; Michael Malthouse (coach) 1991; Dean Kemp 1992; David Hart 1994; Glen Jakovich 1994 & 1995; Mitchell White 1996; Fraser Gehrig 1997; Ben Cousins 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005 & 2006; Michael Gardiner 2003; Phil Matera 2003; Chad Fletcher 2004; Chris Judd 2004 & 2006; Dean Cox 2005, 2006, 2007 & 2008; David Wirrpunda 2005; Darren Glass 2006 & 2007; John Worsfold (coach) 2006; Daniel Kerr 2007 (38 total)

V/AFL Top Goalkickers: Scott Cummings (95) 1999 (1 total)

West Coast's Official 'Twenty Year Anniversary Team - 1987 to 2006': Click here

Highest Score: 29.18 (192) vs. Brisbane Bears 10.14 (74) at the WACA in round 3 1988 (match officially designated a Brisbane Bears home match, but transferred to Perth owing to the unavailability of Carrara)

Most Games: 276 by Glen Jakovich from 1991 to 2004 (correct to the start of the 2009 season)

Record Home Attendance: 43,027 at Subiaco Oval in round 22, 30 August 2003: Fremantle 14.12 (96); West Coast 11.16 (82)

Record Finals Attendance: 97,431 for the 2006 grand final at the MCG: West Coast 12.13 (85); Sydney 12.12 (84)

Overall Success Rate 1987-2008: 56.8%

GREAT GAMES LINKS:	An Arm Wrestle Under Lights
MINI-BIOGRAPHIES:	Ron Alexander   John Annear   John Gastev   Paul Harding   Don Holmes   Glen Jakovich   Ken Judge   Laurie Keene   Dean Kemp   Chris Lewis   Chris Mainwaring   Steve Malaxos   Peter Matera   Wally Matera   Guy McKenna   Geoff Miles   Phil Narkle   Paul Peos   Don Pyke   Murray Rance   Peter Sumich   John Todd   Ryan Turnbull   Dean Turner   Troy Ugle   Peter Wilson   John Worsfold   Mark Zanotti

Although Victoria is undoubtedly the main well-spring of Australian football talent, on a per capita basis its supremacy is by no means unquestionable. Western Australia, with only about a quarter of the population of Victoria, has arguably produced proportionately more champion players and teams than any other state or territory (see footnote1). Even if this contention is rejected, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the sport of Australian football has been substantially enriched by the contribution from west of the Nullarbor.

West Coast's admission to the VFL in 1987 coincided with, indeed in a sense heralded, that competition's evolution from a suburban to a national concern. Prior to 1987 the VFL - allowing for the artificial anomaly that was (and to a certain extent remains) the Sydney Swans - was simply a larger scale variant on the standard state league mould; once the Eagles and Bears arrived, however, it became the Australian Football League in all but name (see footnote 2). Accordingly, premierships and honours conferred on teams and individuals prior to 1987 need to be accorded an altogether different level of importance to those awarded since - or, to put it another way, Australian football did not have an official annual champion club until the VFL became a de facto national competition (see footnote 3).

This point of view, it must be said, was not one which the people responsible for the formation of the West Coast Eagles were all that keen to uphold. Indeed, one of the things which stuck in the craw as far as many Western Australian football supporters were concerned, and which made the Eagles, at least initially, less than a universal ‘flavour of the month’, was the impression - carefully cultivated at the behest of the VFL perhaps? - given by those at the helm of the fledgling club that they were somehow, single-handedly, and for the first time, bringing ‘big time’ football to the west. This was perceived by many as either insulting or ingenuous (or both); in any event, it was so untrue as to not even warrant argument. Nevertheless, the likes of Tom Outridge, ‘Digger’ and ‘Billy’ Thomas, Sammy Clarke, George Doig, and ‘Bonny’ Campbell - to name just half a dozen, more or less at random - must have been turning over in their graves.

Organised football in the Perth/Fremantle region of Western Australia dates back at least as far as 1881. In those days, however, it was rugby, and not ‘Victorian Rules’, which held sway, with only one of the five senior clubs then in existence - Unions - flying the flag for the ‘true faith’.

Two years later a second Victorian Rules club, Swans, emerged, but rugby remained significantly more popular. However, things were soon to change. In those days a significant number of the young men belonging to Perth’s wealthier families were educated in Adelaide, a city second only to Melbourne in its devotion to the beautiful game. Upon returning home to Perth it was only natural that these young men should want to continue playing the sport which they had grown up with, and being of the monied classes they inevitably exerted a certain influence on their less affluent peers. Coincidentally, there was at this time an increasing dissatisfaction - repeatedly alluded to in the local press - with the standard of rugby as a spectacle. It was described as "one continuous round of scrimmages, which are neither edifying to spectators nor exciting" (see footnote 4).

In 1885 one of the leading rugby clubs, Fremantle, ‘voted with its feet’ by defecting to 'Victorian Rules'. It was quickly joined by three other clubs: Rovers, Victorians, and a team of schoolboys from Perth High. The schoolboy team lasted just two matches, but the three other sides went on to contest what in retrospect (though almost certainly not at the time) was viewed as the first ever official Western Australian Football Association premiership, won by Rovers. Perhaps even more significantly, between them the three clubs precipitated what was virtually an overnight switch in the allegiance of the majority of the sports watching public of Perth and Fremantle, from rugby to football.

This is not to suggest that things proceeded swimmingly at first. True, Fremantle Unions entered the competition in 1886, bringing the number of clubs in the competition to four, but the following year saw the demise of the single main driving force behind the switch of codes, as Fremantle disbanded. The standard of football being played was low, and while rugby had clearly been displaced as the colony’s favoured code, by no stretch of the imagination could Perth and Fremantle be classified as ‘football cities’ after the fashion of Melbourne, Geelong or Adelaide.

With the inevitable increase in standard which these easterners brought came a concomitant increase in the appeal of the game. In a sense, football took hold of the minds and hearts of the Western Australian public in the 1890s and has barely relaxed its grip since.

It was not just the Perth-Fremantle axis which benefited either. Many footballers headed straight for the actual goldfields areas themselves, elevating the standard of football being played there also. Indeed, for a time there was little if an difference between the levels of football being played on the goldfields and on the coast. This is not merely a subjective, retrospective assessment either, it was one which contemporary observers shared. In 1907, when the Australian National Football Council was inaugurated, both the WAFA and the goldfields leagues were individually represented. The following year, Western Australia’s first ever carnival team, which finished runners up to the mighty Victorians, included twelve representatives from the WAFA and the same number from the goldfields.

As far as goldfields representation on the sport’s national body went, this was maintained until 1919, and might indeed have carried on for much longer had not the goldfields ANFC delegate, Tom Brett, been prevented by transportation problems from getting to a Council meeting in Melbourne on time. In his absence, the other delegates declared his seat vacant, and for reasons which are unclear goldfields representation was never reinstated.

On the field of play, the prowess of goldfields footballers continued unabated for some time. When World War Two brought inevitable disruption to organised sport followers of football in and around Kalgoorlie were able to look back with pride on victories by combined goldfields teams over the likes of a WAFA side, South Australia, the VFA, Port Adelaide, South Fremantle, West Torrens and Swan Districts. While such achievements petered out on the resumption of football after the war, the contribution made by footballers from the goldfields region remains disproportionately high. Perhaps the most famous footballer to emerge from the goldfields region recently is current West Coast champion Dean Kemp, winner of the 1994 Norm Smith Medal for best afield in the AFL grand final.

Before the arrival on the scene of the West Coast Eagles Western Australia’s triumphs at national level had been restricted to the interstate sphere, but such triumphs were intermittent at best. Indeed, of the 19 interstate carnivals contested prior to the introduction of state of origin football in 1977, Victoria (or, more accurately, the VFL) was successful 16 times. Western Australia, however, was the next best state with 2 wins, at the Perth carnival of 1921, and at the Brisbane carnival exactly forty years later. On both occasions the sandgropers downed the ‘big V’, as indeed they did in 1947 at Hobart when finishing second; the VFL’s only other defeat in 68 pre-state of origin carnival games came in 1911 against South Australia in Adelaide. Western Australia’s overall record during the same period was 39 wins from 67 starts (or 58.2%), marginally superior to South Australia’s 37 wins from 68 (54.4%).

Western Australia and the VFL had met on four previous occasions for a quartet of wins to the Vics when the sides met at Subiaco in the second match of the 1921 carnival. The Victorians had already comfortably accounted for South Australia by 35 points in the opening game of the championships and were warmly favoured. However, the sandgropers, inspired by the peerless ruck duo of Ion and Outridge, fought tenaciously from start to finish, never allowing their opponents leeway to settle. As the game entered its dying moments Western Australia led 6.16 (52) to 6.11 (47) but Victoria was on the attack. When Collingwood spearhead Dick Lee marked within relatively easy goal kicking range things looked all up for the home side. Lee, a renowned place kicker, carefully planted the ball on the ground and stepped back to take his kick, only to see the ball dislodged by a sudden gust of wind. Picking the ball up, Lee attempted to dodge around the Western Australian player on the mark, William ‘Nipper’ Truscott, but Truscott not only caught him, he managed to deprive Lee of the ball and make an effective clearance. The Victorians’ final chance had gone, and Western Australia managed to hold on to secure a memorable win.

Three years later in the first ever Hobart carnival the VFL and Western Australia staged another epic duel, but this time it was the Vics who were able to hang on to record a dramatic 8 point victory. The match was watched by a crowd of 15,687, which at the time was a record for a sporting contest in Tasmania. (A detailed review of this match can be read here.)  Western Australian full forward ‘Bonny’ Campbell was the player of the championships, not only booting 7 majors against the Vics, but also contributing 23 goals to Western Australia’s Australian record tally of 43.19 (277) against Queensland (see footnote 6).

Western Australian football was particularly strong during the years immediately following World War Two (see footnote 7). The state side enjoyed unparalleled success, downing Victoria in each of the first three post war meetings as well as enjoying the better of their encounters with South Australia. On the club front, as described in detail in the entry for that club, South Fremantle were without dispute one of the strongest teams in Australia during much of the period 1947 to 1954, as victories over the likes of Collingwood (both home and away), Footscray, Carlton and a South Australian state ‘B’ team attest. After the Carlton game Blues coach Perc Bentley remarked "Carlton cannot teach South Fremantle anything. In fact, we have come over to learn something (see footnote 8)."   It was a sentiment which several future Blues coaches would find themselves sharing.

In the years following the Brisbane carnival of 1961 Victoria’s football superiority gradually increased. On the interstate front, losses to Western Australia and South Australia in 1965 were the first choice VFL team’s last under pre-state of origin conditions, but the irony of it was that many of the most auspicious wearers of the Big V jumper - names like Jesaulenko, Baldock, Hart, Stewart, Marshall, Farmer and Howell - hailed from outside the state of Victoria. During the 1960s and ‘70s an ever increasing number of such individuals came from west of the Nullarbor, and while no one could blame them for seeking fame and fortune in the toughest league of all, the big losers were the Western Australian football watching public. Deprived for years of seeing the likes of Farmer, Marshall, Cable, Jackson and co. at their peak, the arrival in 1977 of the state of origin concept of representative football was arguably the first stage in the war to recapture football for the people who were its true life blood, the supporters.

Much of the credit for getting the state of origin concept off the ground has to go to then Subiaco Football Club Marketing Manager Leon Larkin, who undertook two years of intensive negotiation with the powers-that-were at the VFL in order to obtain agreement for the inaugural match, which took place at Subiaco Oval, between Western Australia and Victoria, on 8 October 1977. Significantly, a Western Australian team comprised entirely of home-based players had, on 25 June, taken on a VFL team containing many of the same players who would return to Perth three and a half months later for the state of origin clash. The respective scores of the two matches offered a persuasive argument, if such were needed, of the extent to which the VFL had denuded the WAFL of its elite talent:

On 25 June 1977 VFL 23.16 (154) defeated Western Australia 13.13 (91) - a margin of 63 points

On 8 October 1977 Western Australia 23.13 (151) defeated Victoria 8.9 (57) - a margin of 94 points, representing an overall turn around of 157 points

Western Australia’s previous biggest winning margin against a Victorian state team had been a mere 38 points in 1948. Almost overnight, an inferiority complex was dismantled: Victoria, it seemed, was not intrinsically superior, only wealthier.

Such wealth still constituted a significant weapon, however. As the 1980s dawned it was virtually taken for granted that any Western Australian footballer worth his salt would, having served an all too brief apprenticeship in the WAFL, head east to the VFL. The standard of football being served up by the eight WAFL clubs inevitably declined. East Perth Football Club, conscious both of this and the likely long term effects on the health of the game if the continued player drain went unchecked, in 1980 made a unilateral bid to enter a team in the VFL from the following season. Club President Jim Leahy succinctly and somewhat wryly observed, "Our prognosis for Western Australian football is that it is destined for second class status because of the continual loss of quality players to Victoria (see footnote 9)."

It should not be assumed that such a view was universally held, however. Despite the player drain, football in Western Australia was superficially healthy. Crowds were buoyant, and the introduction of state of origin football gave supporters an annual opportunity to witness the sport being displayed by some of its most proficient practitioners. All too quickly, however, the crowds began to diminish. By 1983 the management of the WAFL itself acknowledged that economic crisis loomed. They approached the state government for financial aid, and were rewarded with a grant of $1.9 million. However, inevitably there were strings. The government wanted a full scale investigation into the likely future financial demands of football, and they set up an investigative committee to report on this.  

The investigative committee consisted of local businessmen Bill Mitchell (chairman), Peter Collins and John Horgan, and the main recommendation in its report, which was published in January 1984, was that Western Australian football should be controlled by an independent board, rather than by the traditional WAFL management committee.  Within a month this recommendation had been implemented and a new, streamlined seven man administration was in place.  The government indicated its satisfaction by taking up the payments still owing on the $4 million two tier grandstand at Subiaco Oval which had been completed three years earlier.  Western Australian football was now free to embark on a future in which the whole landscape of the game would be transformed by what, to earlier generations, might well have been viewed as 'fraternisation with the enemy'.

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Footnotes

1. Tasmania and, more recently, the Northern Territory might well, with apparent justification, argue this claim, but as with all such subjective assertions, proof is notoriously difficult to come by - or, at any rate, to agree on.  Back to Main Text

2. The Victorian Football League officially changed its name to the Australian Football League in 1990, but that this was an artificial watershed is difficult to refute.  Back to Main Text

3. The tacit assumption held by many football supporters that each season's VFL premier was also by definition the best team in Australia is surprisingly easy to challenge. See, for example, the entries on Adelaide, North Adelaide, Norwood, South Fremantle, Sturt and West Adelaide.  Back to Main Text

4. Quoted in The Footballers by Geoff Christian, page 5.  Back to Main Text

5. This was not the same Fremantle club which had pioneered the switch from rugby to Victorian Rules a decade earlier. It was actually Fremantle Unions, which had dropped the ‘Unions’ part of its name in 1890.  Back to Main Text

6. The Queenslanders were perhaps fortunate to avoid an even bigger embarrassment at the hands of South Australia, the croweaters proving inordinately haphazard in front of goal in amassing a total of 37.46 (268).  Back to Main Text

7. Everything is relative, however, and it is only fair to mention an alternative to this point of view, which is that football in general was at something of a low ebb - on the playing front at any rate - in the years immediately following the second World War, and that therefore Western Australia’s achievements have to be viewed in the context of a significantly weaker overall field.  Back to Main Text

8. Quoted in The South Fremantle Story, volume 2 by Jack Lee, page 71.  Back to Main Text

9. Quoted in Soaring: the Official History of the West Coast Eagles Football Club’s First 10 Years by Geoff Christian, page 10. In the eyes of most Victorians, Western Australian football had never enjoyed better than second class status.  Back to Main Text