The Roar
The Roar

AFL
Advertisement

Have West Coast got too much of a good thing with Sam Mitchell?

8th April, 2017
Advertisement
Sam Mitchell of the Eagles is seen in action during the Round 1 AFL match between the North Melbourne Kangaroos and West Coast Eagles at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Sunday, March 26, 2017. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Roar Rookie
8th April, 2017
14
1415 Reads

When Sam Mitchell’s blockbuster trade to West Coast was announced in the pre-season, the narrative wrote itself.

West Coast had dived headfirst into a win-win situation. It was a no-brainer. Impossible to argue with.

Mitchell is a legend of the game, he had just won the Hawks’ best and fairest for the fifth time and, to mitigate any concerns over his age, he was committed to remaining on as a coach.

Something about gift horses and their mouths.

Three games into the season and Mitchell has done everything West Coast fans might have hoped.

The Sam Mitchell brand does what it says on the tin.

His ability to rack up possessions at will, his poise in midfield with nuanced fakes and fast hands to knit together play in the clinches have not dimmed with the move across the Nullabor.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Advertisement

The premiership window had been prised open just a little bit more. And that’s without even mentioning the fact Mitchell knows a thing or two about how to win premierships.

But underneath a start to the season that suffered its first hiccup where the most significant September action occurs against Richmond on Saturday lunchtime, there is a unease bubbling under the surface.

Sam Mitchell West Coast Eagles AFL 2017 tall

Do West Coast actually need Sam Mitchell?

Have West coast got too much of a good thing – after all they had a bloke who has been doing the same job for the past decade, and he’s got a Bronwlow too.

West Coast’s performances this year have been at the top-level without being convincing.

In wins against North Melbourne and St Kilda they got involved in shootouts they might have lost if the other team kicked straighter in front of goal.

Advertisement

Getting involved in a shootout against the Kangaroos was a reasonable symptom of playing at Etihad – a venue that is what indoor sprinting is to the Olympic Games – but at home against St Kilda it smacked of a team being forced off balance by a younger bull.

Against Richmond the Eagles’ game plan was disoriented by Richmond’s tactics. To hunt and run their more credentialled rivals off their feet.

Alarmingly for Eagles fans when the pressure descended they managed just three goals in the second half. Two of them cam in the space of 30 seconds and the other with the game gone.

It would be naive to blame Sam Mitchell for any of this.

But it is worthwhile wondering out loud whether West Coast have become vulnerable to fast-paced teams. Can a midfield of generals like Mitchell and Priddis sustain against the run-and-gun soldiers that have become the hallmark of the AFL following the Doggies’ premiership success.

It’s arguable West Coast simply have too much of a good thing; like drinking no beer at all and then having one beer too many.

Sam Mitchell is that beer.

Advertisement

It’s a bloody good beer and when you’re mate unexpectedly offered it to you – pretty much for free – it was a good idea at the time. It was a lot of fun but, deep down, you know you should have had a water or a kebab because the hangover is waiting.

West Coast needed a kebab last pre-season, not a Crown Lager.

They need someone with more grunt. Someone who an opposition fears who will take the game on with a burst that the highlight-reel compilers can’t overlook.

Sam Mitchell does all the work before the highlight editor hits play. So does Priddis.

To watch West Coast against Richmond was to see a team in desperate need of a foot soldier who can break the lines and take the game by the scruff of the neck.

Luke Shuey is a very good player but how many times has he been a match winner? How many times has he or Andrew Gaff decided a game in the way Ben Cousins or Chris Judd during the Eagles’ last premiership window.

If the Eagles are to truly prise open the premiership window that the awoken white-walkers from western Sydney apparently have a mortgage on, then these are the players they must find.

Advertisement

Such players, of course, don’t grow on trees but if West Coast are to take the next step they must find one.

On their own list it is arguable as to whether they have one but certainly they must start to blood young players – a practice that has worryingly been shelved by Adam Simpson in recent times.

Certainly Richmond’s revival has come on the back of the likes of youngsters like Daniel Rioli.

West Coast has another option to find that player – albeit at the end of the year – when two game breakers with the class they need are likely to be available.

They got a first-hand view of one of them at the MCG on Saturday – while the other would not countenance such a move even if Hayden Ballantyne (or Daniel Metropolis for fans of these sorts of things) might.

Every club with cap space will be in the same market place but if the Eagles are to make the next step they will have to be brave in either selection or at the trade table.

Sam Mitchell fell in their lap. A premiership won’t.

Advertisement
close