West Coast's moment of reckoning comes earlier than anticipated

Saturday’s meeting with Port Adelaide is not quite a ‘must win’ game but it should be categorised as a ‘highly recommended’ game to win, should that vernacular exist.

For it to come in Round 4 instead of deep into the season, perhaps even deep into the finals, is what has caught most Eagles’ fans offside.

It was clear from the outset that isolating in a Queensland hub was not the way any team, let alone one who faces geographical and fixturing handicaps as par for the course, would have wanted to re-start, especially considering this season will be more like a 10,000-metre race than the usual marathon.

Having said that, though, great sporting teams have garnered considerable success from embracing adversity, perceived or real. Jose Mourinho, the polarising football manager, has cemented himself in the pantheon of elite managers through finding scenarios to remind his team how the world was conspiring against them and it was them, only them, in those four walls who could change the narrative.

Mourinho did this to great effect at a number of clubs before overstaying his welcome, exhausting his team mentally, as he thrashed about, attempting to find an enemy, anyone, who he could use to focus the players’ mind against.

It is a tactic with a short shelf life, but powerful in the right environment.

With this in mind, I was hopeful that the West Coast coach, Adam Simpson, would use the Gold Coast hub to circle the wagons and stoke the fires of unfairness to get a result on the ground. Despite his clear strengths as a coach and creating a family within the group, perhaps stoking aggression and anger does not strike to his skillset.

Adam Simpson (AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Maybe Simpson did try that approach partially or fully, but it’s clear it is not working.

Compounding this, West Coast’s public statements that they need certainty on a return date to Western Australia is providing the verbal evidence of how the team is feeling alongside what our eyes are telling us when we watch that midfield get bullied out of yet another clearance.

They just don’t want to be there.

If the team was winning, or at least competing, a firm stance on clarity on the hub end date would be in line with this proud organisation which is respected and admired as being among the most professional, methodical and deliberate of all. Even in Victoria, the media often comment that, of all the clubs, it is West Coast who offer the fewest excuses for any drop in performance.

However, with on and off the record comments on the hub being punctuated by miserable performances on the field, the players would not be human for seeing everything about their time on the Gold Coast in an anything other than a poisonous way.

Pundits and supporters of other clubs are also picking up on the Eagles’ mood. Some Dockers’ fans are enjoying comparing their club’s acceptance of the hub to West Coast’s, although this comparison is a little complex.

The demographic of the two clubs are remarkably different – the Eagles have 14 fathers in their group and Freo 4. Additionally, Fremantle’s 2020 season will be deemed successful based on a different narrative than West Coast’s. The Dockers will be seeking just performance improvements – and wins would be a welcomed outcome.

Whereas West Coast are firmly in their premiership window and would judge anything less than a grand final appearance as a disappointment. Results are even more crucial because, as 2019 showed, falling a place or two below your potential on the ladder can alter outcomes.

Given that the next set of games is due to be released, it is worth reflecting on how much influence West Coast, and their hub partners, could have had, and could continue to have, on the fixturing given it was they whom sacrificed their plans to re-start the season.

In hindsight, could West Coast have lobbied for their games against Brisbane and Gold Coast to be during the day, when dew would have been less prevalent?

Maybe they did. Maybe the AFL refused on the grounds of maximising TV exposure, which would be understandable, especially for the Lions’ match, in this particular season. Maybe they didn’t try.

Maybe that would be letting West Coast, a flag favourite, off lightly for poor performances.

The club would do well to privately, forcefully, make their case to the Western Australia government and the AFL to bring them relief from the hub, as they are right to do. Publicly, and to the playing group, they should be tight lipped and firmer, focussing only on things they can control.

Adam Simpson, coach of the Eagles addresses the team at three quarter time during the 2018 AFL Second Preliminary Final match between the West Coast Eagles and the Melbourne Demons at Optus Stadium on September 22, 2018 in Perth, Australia. (Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Media/Getty Images)

On the field, all is not lost. Another team, far from home, await for an – at the time of writing – dry afternoon match up at Metricon Stadium.

Port Adelaide have impressed, although experts would like to see a larger sample size than a pre-shutdown win over Gold Coast, a smashing of their reeling rivals, Adelaide, and a solid performance against a Fremantle team who are not expected to trouble serious contenders this season.

Collingwood aside, no other premiership favourite has started strongly, so there is time, especially given the likelihood of a solid run at Optus Stadium later in the season. Looking further ahead, with the finals to be played in October, this increases the chances of a drier finals series. (A dry October is Melbourne is relative of course, but small variables, added up, do influence outcomes).

Premiership windows wait for no club and care not for hubs, fixturing, or dew. As the Tim Kelly trade showed, with the plethora of high draft picks leaving West Coast for Geelong, the Eagles clearly know this.

Saturday provides one of the last opportunities to circle the wagons, lock themselves in a room, and for Simpson to do his best impression of Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday and ask his players what they are going to do to change the narrative.