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No team allows their opposition to have honourable ten-goal losses quite like the West Coast Eagles.
The Eagles have beaten Brisbane and Collingwood by 64 and 62 points respectively this season, in matches that both losing fan-bases took plenty of positives out of. Last year, West Coast laid waste to the Bulldogs by 77 points in Round 21 in a game that, somehow, did give indications that Robert Murphy’s squad could indeed compete with the big boys.
The catch is, of course, that each of those games took place in Perth at Domain Stadium. The Eagles’ ‘House of Pain’ is a domain for them to prosper and a morgue for their opponents. Since their renaissance at the start of last year, West Coast have a 15-1 record at home against interstate sides. Thirteen of those victories were by 50 points or more.
The other two were wins by 32 and 25 points in finals over Hawthorn and North Melbourne, margins that ultimately flattered the losers. Outside of Hawthorn, possibly the greatest team in AFL history, no interstate team has got closer than 50 points to West Coast in Perth in a regular season game since Richmond did so on July 25th, 2014, the same day that the Scarlett Johansson film Lucy was first released in cinemas.
What makes West Coast’s home dominance so jarring is how impossible it’s been for them to replicate it on the road. There are objective factors at work. Studies have shown that across almost every sport, teams play better at home. Las Vegas factors in an automatic three-point advantage for home teams in the NFL, the equivalent of about two goals in the AFL.
‘The House of Pain’ isn’t the only house of pain. In recent times, the Seattle Seahawks have proved almost unbeatable in the rainy Pacific Northwest, the Golden State Warriors virtually untouchable at Oracle Arena, and Barcelona irresistible at the Nou Camp.
When you go to Oracle Arena in Oakland to see Golden State play, you feel like you’re walking into someone’s kingdom. The atmosphere strangles the opposition even before the opening tip. The ceiling is unusually low, making the acoustics unreasonably loud, deafening to the point that you can’t hear the person next to you – you literally have to send them text messages despite the fact that they’re 30 centimetres away from you. The crowd propels the Warriors, and it feels as though they spend the entire game running downhill, while their opponents are struggling uphill with two broken legs.
The Eagles aren’t at that level at Domain Stadium, but there are similarities. The intimidation factor is approximate. The stadium is a cauldron, and the Western heat only adds to the idea that opponents are being cooked alive. Sweat drips off the Eagles players (surely, their must be some artificial oil added in as well) and makes them look like warriors to the strangers from a colder climate who have feebly invaded their land.
A certain mysticism hovers around out West. If you close your eyes you can still see the sun shining off of Ben Cousins’ glistening biceps, making him look more like a Greek God than an All-Australian midfielder.
The reasons are numerous for home ground advantage. The conditions are familiar and the crowd’s fierce energy is intimidating for the opposition and invigorating for the home team. Research indicates that umpires are more likely to favour the home team because, you know, they’re human beings, and the desires of 50,000 screaming people do have a tendency to transfer themselves onto the unconscious of the people that make decisions which will either draw their animosity or make them relent.
The Eagles have benefited from favourable umpiring at home to comical extents, which are not explained simply by having a couple of Selwood brothers in the team over the years. Since 2011 West Coast have played 58 games at home against interstate opposition and won the free kick count in 51 of them. That’s 88 per cent.
But the inconsistency between West Coast’s performances home and away can’t be reduced to a few more free kicks, the crowd being a bit more vocal in their favour, and the dimensions of the ground being more familiar. The game changes on the road, but it doesn’t change that much.
When West Coast takes the field at Domain, the opposition play like they’re running into waves. They’re slow and uncoordinated running towards them, and then are inevitably crushed by the imposing force coming back at them. Their bodies eventually float out lifelessly to nowhere like Wilson the volleyball at the end of Cast Away.
On the road, the Eagles are very much on dry land, and they’re made to look unimpressively mortal. At home they’re a picture of cohesion, everything seems connected, and everything is done at pace. Away from home, they’re disparate, hesitant and lost. Structure breaks down, and the vaunted ‘web’ becomes the ‘block of Swiss cheese’, riddled with holes.
The road woes are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for West Coast. Call it the Curse of Tom Lynch, because ever since Gold Coast’s star calmly slotted a clutch set shot against them to force a draw at Metricon in Round 18 last season, the Eagles have been winless in their six road tilts, with five losses by 39 points or more.
Perhaps the real damage was done with their insipid grand final performance. Maybe now every time the West Coast players step on a plane they have Vietnam War flashbacks to Jack Darling spilling chest marks. Whatever the case, it’s clearly in their heads, or at least in Will Schofield’s feet, which seem to be good for one gag-reel clanger per interstate trip.
But before they were the team that put in the worst showing in a grand final since Port Adelaide somehow made the big dance in 2007 (nobody has, or ever will be able to explain to me exactly how that happened. The Power’s 2007 grand final appearance was the equivalent of the Shane Woewodin Brownlow), the Eagles did show some fortitude on the road.
They completely outclassed Richmond and Collingwood in Melbourne last year, at a time when outclassing Richmond and Collingwood in fact meant something. And like Dean Moriarty, this new West Coast era was actually born on the road, in Round 6 last year, where they triumphed over Port Adelaide in South Australia, and announced to the football world that they were a force to be taken seriously. It would have been inconceivable to think back then that a grand final defeat and a 5-3 start to the next season would be a disappointment for these Eagles, but their dominance has set the benchmark high.
In the most wide-open premiership race in recent memory, the Eagles have the talent to go one better this year than they did in 2015. They’ll be in the mix until the end too, with a kind draw that, incredibly, could see them entering the final three weeks at 15-4 if they just take care of business in games they’ll likely be favoured in.
But this is a team that will only face its judgement in big games on the road and in September. Ultimately, they’ll only be able to truly prove themselves with high stakes wins in Victoria, but they can start exorcising their demons this weekend with a win against Port at the Adelaide Oval, the site that foretold hope for these Eagles and prefaced a dominance that has been impressive, but desperately needs to overcome its allergy to airports.