With three weeks left in last year’s home-and-away season, we had the Eagles figured out and so, it seemed, did the rest of the league.
West Coast pummelled the teams below them and were kicked in the face by those above them on the ladder. They were a team that looked like the 2003 Lions against Gold Coast at Subiaco on a Sunday afternoon, and a team that looked like the 2016 Lions when they played Hawthorn, Geelong or Sydney.
Whenever the Eagles had a chance to make a statement they fell silent, gasping for breath as the elite ran right past them. They did their loudest talking when nobody was listening.
Every year there are teams like this – the 2014 Dockers, 2013 Swans, 2011 Hawks – talent-rich squads that post gaudy win totals, cruise into the finals but always lack that extra intangible brilliance that separates them from the truest contenders. The 2016 Eagles were following this archetype to a tee. But then Dylan Shiel forgot to attack the ball with conviction, Nic Naitanui pounced, and suddenly everything became a lie.
Until the Bulldogs touched God, West Coast had the most impressive three-week stretch of the season, ending the home-and-away by beating GWS and Adelaide on the road, with a throttling of nemesis Hawthorn in between. The fever dream win-streak came with the most sobering of costs, though, with Naitanui, West Coast’s most important player, going down against the Hawks.
Without Naitanui, and going up against a buzzsaw of football humanity and ferocious destiny in week one of the finals, the Eagles wilted, crushed into meek submission by the Dogs. Somewhere in a parallel universe, Jack Darling can still sense Josh Dunkley about to meet him on that near wing.
And so ended the most inexplicable season that any team had last year – at least the one that didn’t end three weeks later in euphoria, and history erased.
The Eagles were nothing, then they were everything, then they were dead. In those three weeks, though, across those three states, they found something (or rediscovered something that looked irretrievable), something that makes them 2017’s most interesting team.
When the Eagles are ‘on’ they play with magnetism and fury. The expanses of Domain Stadium feel tiny and suffocating for their opponents, wide and eternal for those in navy blue and gold. They play with pace and violent intensity, dominating contested ball, and the field begins to feel as though it’s tilted downhill towards their forward line.
When they’re ‘off’, though, like, say, in the 2015 grand final (one of the all-time blazing displays of ‘off’) they look frail, unsure, and ultimately, fearful. If they’re not playing at manic physical speed then the mania seems to infect their minds.
A slow pace is a bad pace for West Coast, a team that has long been deficient in elite ball users by foot in the middle of the ground. Watching Luke Hodge, Jordan Lewis and Shaun Burgoyne carve the Eagles up in that grand final with incisive, corridor piercing short passes was like seeing an enemy capture a village that didn’t know that firearms existed.
The final piece of that Hawthorn silk quartet, of course, is now an Eagle. Sam Mitchell isn’t just one of the most technically skilled players in the league, he’s also one of its coolest heads. When everything is burning, often the West Coast midfield dives hopelessly into the flames.
Mitchell, though, turns fire into ice. He never gets caught up in chaos – it’s only ever something that happens around him. He makes the right decision every time, and he takes all the time he needs to make it. If the Eagles are forced to play slow, that’s fine by Mitchell, who has less leg speed than most people who will read this.
How much Mitchell has left in the tank is one of the biggest questions of 2017. When exactly Naitanui returns, and at what capacity, is another.
The top of the ladder seems more predictable than most years. GWS are a juggernaut, the Bulldogs aren’t going anywhere, and neither are the Swans, who don’t know how to leave excellence. Question marks hover over the two Victorian powers of the past decade – Hawthorn and Geelong – and they likely don’t have the devastating upside of previous incarnations. (In saying that, it would be surprising if both aren’t pushing for home finals or a second chance come September).
Adelaide should be an offensive force again, but the listless showing against Sydney in the finals last year was instructive – how can a team make a grand final with only one elite midfielder?
West Coast are the trump card. They have the talent to go all the way and the coach too. They have superstars in every phase of the game, and a home ground advantage that all but ensures they’ll be in the thick of the fight for the double chance. With Naitanui sidelined, the ruck is an issue, but in Scott Lycett and recruits Jonathan Giles, Nathan Vardy and Drew Petrie they at least have bodies to throw at the problem.
And in an era where space is at a premium, congestion reigns and ball movement so often becomes stunted, the Eagles have the ultimate bailout – height and aerial prowess, led by the contested marking holy trinity of Darling, Josh Kennedy and Jeremy McGovern. And now they have Mitchell, the God of the ground.
The Eagles have the most experienced list in the competition and the second oldest. By season’s end, Kennedy, Matt Priddis and Shannon Hurn will have joined Mitchell, Petrie, Giles, Mark LeCras and Sam Butler in the over 30 club. Their time has to be now.
If Naitanui can come back, it just might be. Even if he doesn’t, a third Western force is well placed to take its shot at the top of the ladder, joining the one just crowned in Victoria, and the one everyone is anointing in New South Wales.
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