They are the six lost years that transformed the once-mighty West Coast into the modern-day Fitzroy.
The period in question was 2015-20, in which the Eagles played finals each season – winning the 2018 premiership in a classic grand final against Collingwood – but used a first-round draft pick only twice: Daniel Venables (No.13, 2016) and Jarrod Brander (No.13, 2017).
Happier times: Jarrod Brander played only 22 games for West Coast after being a first-round draft pick.Credit: Getty Images
Venables played only 21 games before repeat concussions led to his retirement, while Brander was delisted after a similarly modest 22 appearances, then played five more at the Giants before suffering the same fate.
Adam Simpson’s West Coast are the talk of the AFL, for all the wrong reasons, planted on the bottom of the ladder and having suffered four triple-digit defeats, including by 171 points to Sydney at the SCG on Saturday night.
Oscar Allen is one of West Coast’s best.Credit: AFL Photos
Their downfall is both a story of injury misfortune but also the high-risk game of dodging the top of the draft for too long. Clubs cannot afford to miss with those early selections when they make so few of them.
The Eagles are the case the AFL will refer to in the future for why they introduced a rule that started in 2019, whereby clubs must use at least two first-round draft picks in a rolling four-year period – and why they are so far reluctant to allow trading more than one year ahead.
West Coast invested only 12 picks in the first two rounds of the draft in the aforementioned six years, with just seven of those players still on the list.
Of that seven, only Oscar Allen and Liam Ryan are considered stars, while Xavier O’Neill has been axed three times this season and Luke Foley has mustered 31 matches into his fifth year. The remaining three are Tom Cole (82 games), Josh Rotham (55) and Bailey Williams (39). The Tim Kelly trade with Geelong, often cited as being at the heart of the club’s demise, was, in reality, the straw that broke the camel’s back rather than the root cause. But it did hurt, for various reasons.
The Eagles selected Brander and Allen before the Cats snapped up Kelly in the 2017 draft, then two years later handed over a king’s ransom of picks to get him: 14, 27 and 37, plus a future first-round selection, which ended up being No.18.
They received pick 52 and a future third-round selection on top of Kelly, who they hoped would keep them in flag contention.
West Australian footballers they could have picked with those Kelly selections include Mitch Georgiades (a player they tried to lure home last year), Jeremy Sharp, Trent Rivers, Chad Warner and Nathan O’Driscoll – but hindsight is a wonderful thing in recruiting.
Tim Kelly cost West Coast an extraordinary haul of draft picks.Credit: Getty Images
The delay in West Coast realising how dire their situation was did not help, while Rohan O’Brien is their fourth list manager since late 2014. His three predecessors were Adrian Battiston, Brady Rawlings and the short-lived Darren Glass.
Rawlings, who now holds a similar role at North Melbourne, presided over the Eagles’ list from September 2016 until resigning in mid-2019, after accepting a job at the Kangaroos.
West Coast won the 2018 premiership with the fourth-oldest and third-most-experienced list, and remained in the top four in both through the 2021 season. They were still the fourth-oldest last year, with the sixth-highest games average per player.
Eagles football boss Gavin Bell offered an insight into the club’s thinking when he told The Age they did not feel they received an “honest sighter” last year of where they were at, due to being hit hard by COVID-19.
They have been smashed by injury and illness in the past two seasons, coinciding with the natural decline of many of their champion veterans, from Luke Shuey to Elliot Yeo, Andrew Gaff and Nic Naitanui, who won’t play a game this year because of an Achilles issue.
Shannon Hurn, Jeremy McGovern, Yeo, Jack Darling, Jamie Cripps, Shuey, Naitanui and Gaff will be 30 or older by year’s end. Josh Kennedy and Jack Redden retired at the end of 2022, while Brad Sheppard, Nathan Vardy and Mark Hutchings exited two years ago.
Nic Naitanui is sidelined with an Achilles issue.Credit: Getty Images
O’Brien, who combined his long-time recruiting job with becoming list boss in February 2021, is belatedly turning to youth.
He drafted Campbell Chesser in the first round nine months after he started, then ‘split’ their No.2 pick last year into two first-round selections, which were used on local pair Reuben Ginbey – their first top-10 choice since Gaff in 2010 – and Elijah Hewett. They also made four picks in the second round across the past two years, and appear to have found a diamond in the rough, Noah Long, with the No.58 pick in 2022.
O’Brien will likely have the final say on two vital matters in the coming months, assuming the Eagles finish last.
Firstly, do they pick boom Victorian prospect Harley Reid, or trade the No.1 selection for as many as three first-rounders? And, secondly, will the richest football club in the land humbly ask the AFL for a priority pick, after winning only three of their past 40 matches?
These are unprecedented times for West Coast, and the draft – the mechanism they largely overlooked for many years – is their only way out.
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