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“They can’t beat… a good team… away from home.” Before reading anything further, guess which team this sentence was directed at.
This comment has been the new one-liner stamped on the 2016 West Coast Eagles. I have great respect for Gerard Whateley, but honestly, that sentence, which was spoken on Monday’s instalment of AFL 360, was possibly one of the most moronic and ignorant comments of his career.
Now, before my head gets bitten off, let’s clarify something. West Coast are not playing well this season, and on face value, yes, the term flat-track bullies is somewhat warranted.
The Eagles have won every game at home, (beating Brisbane, Fremantle, Richmond and Collingwood), and have lost every game away from home, losing to Hawthorn, Geelong and Sydney.
If I could sum up their season in one line, it would be very similar to what Whateley said on Monday night: “They can’t beat… a good team… away from home.”
But hold on for one second. Which team actually has beaten a good team away from home this year?
This season in isolation, there has been 13 top-eight battles. Of those top-eight battles, the home side has won 12 out of 13 games. The single outlier being Hawthorn toppling the Bulldogs at Etihad a few weeks back.
Now, if we look at this data, we can state a very interesting fact. That fact being, not one team has travelled interstate and returned with a win against a ‘good’ (top-eight) team.
How come West Coast haven’t had the chance to play a good team at home yet? I delved through the draw to see when our run of home games against quality opposition would come, and what I found was shocking.
I put together this table, showing the amount of games against top eight teams, that current top eight get to host. As we can glean from the table, Geelong definitely have the upper hand, playing a total of seven games at home, giving them a massive advantage over the rest of the competition.
Judging by the statistics that we have gathered in the first seven rounds, you can almost pencil in every one of those seven games as a win.
| Team | Played | Yet to come | Total | |
| Geelong Cats | 2 | 5 | 7 | |
| Adelaide Crows | 1 | 5 | 6 | |
| North Melbourne | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
| Sydney Swans | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
| Western Bulldogs | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
| Greater Western Sydney | 2 | 3 | 5 | |
| Hawthorn Hawks | 2 | 2 | 4 | |
| West Coast Eagles | 0 | 2 | 2 |
West Coast, on the other hand, are the only team yet to host a ‘good’ team at home this season. Not only that, but they only play two top-eight teams in Perth this year, the first of which comes after their Round 14 bye.
From looking at this data, it is only fair to say that we can’t be bashing up on West Coast when they haven’t had the opportunity to flex their muscles. The stats show that it’s extremely hard to travel interstate and win games this year, so any ‘good’ win that a top eight side achieves, is going to be at home.
With that fact in mind, it is hardly fair to be calling West Coast flat-track or home-track bullies, simply because their draw doesn’t give them the opportunity to show the AFL world what they can do on their home turf.
The competition is so tight this year, that home ground advantage is extremely important, and playing a top-eight team on your own track is vital for your chances of winning the big one come finals.
As poor as the Eagles are at the moment, flat-track bullies is a harsh label considering what we now know in regards to the fixture. So how about we stop calling them these degenerative and insulting labels, and just call them for what they are, out of form. We have all seen what the Eagles are capable of, so write them off at your own peril.
“They can’t beat… a good team… away from home.”
At the beginning of this article, I asked which team this comment could be directed at. The answer is, any team in the AFL. So why are we targeting the Eagles.
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