2023 Best 23s: Could the Eagles be better than we think this year?

The countdown to Round 1, 2023 has officially begun – so throughout January, I’ll be looking at all 18 AFL clubs and doing my best to put together an optimum team for the new year.

I’ll take injuries and suspensions into account, but this won’t be a predicted team for Round 1 – think of it more as a guide to what your team’s best 23 (the 22 starting players plus the new unrestricted substitute) could look like as the year unfolds.

Today, it’s West Coast’s turn. Check out the links below if your team has already been done.

Adelaide | Brisbane | Carlton | Collingwood | Essendon

Fremantle | Geelong | Gold Coast | GWS | Hawthorn

Melbourne | North Melbourne | Port Adelaide | Richmond

St Kilda | Sydney

Change is brewing at the Eagles – but when you win two games for the season and endure your worst year in history, there’s not much else you can do.

Through COVID catastrophe, a horror injury run and already hampered by an ageing list going into 2022, Adam Simpson has been tasked with taking the Eagles from rock bottom back up the ladder.

Not every long-term coach, even the ones with premierships under their belt, get this opportunity; but while one horror season amid extenuating circumstances can be forgiven, a second on the trot will see his job truly come under the blowtorch.

It’s a fine line Simpson must walk between ushering in a new era of young guns, while also squeezing the last drops of elite football out of his senior core to form a competitive outfit. Get it right, and the Eagles could easily do what they did in 2011, and rise from the foot of the ladder into premiership contention in quick time. Get it wrong, though, and recent AFL history has only too many examples of teams who have paid the price with a decade or more in the wilderness.

If history is any guide, the Eagles won’t be down for long. But while the past can be a great teacher, their status as the biggest club in the land won’t make the rebuild go any faster if the foundations laid this year aren’t sturdy.

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Defenders

It’s a waste of time comparing the Eagles to the majority of the rest of the league last season, so let’s save time and instead restrict the comparisons to their fellow disasterpiece, North Melbourne.

The Eagles may have narrowly avoided conceding more points than the Kangaroos last year, but considering North’s biggest problems were up the ground – the Eagles had 95 fewer inside 50s against for the season – their defence is either just as bad or even worse than the Roos’.

Things would have been even worse without the Herculean performance of Tom Barrass, who, with Jeremy McGovern managing just 10 games and looking well short of his best even when he did play, came very close to one of the greatest achievements by a defender in recent times: an All-Australian nod in that Eagles rabble.

Barrass has his weaknesses – his contested defensive one-on-one loss rate of 34.5 per cent was the third-worst of the top 60 attendees in the competition, ahead of only Essendon pair Jake Kelly and Jayden Laverde. But a lot of that is due to the fact he had to stand the best forwards in the game getting silver service with very little pressure further afield, all the while attempting to read the ball in the air well enough to intercept mark.

Only Darcy Moore took more of those last year than Barrass’ 72, which included a staggering nine in Round 22 and seven a week prior. The Eagles lost both of those matches, but it’s fair to say they would have done so by a lot more without Barrass there as a repelling force.

McGovern’s return should help matters providing he’s fully fit, though it’s arguable that his strengths – namely, intercept marking – conflict with Barrass’, and will just result in the latter’s numbers falling back to pre-2022 levels. More importantly, neither are all that well equipped to take on the big monsters, and would be better served floating off second or third talls to provide timely spoils or marks.

That’s where Harry Edwards and Rhett Bazzo come in. Edwards is nowhere near the finished article, and his 28 career games have been a mixed bag. But he’s tall, athletic and at 22, has a lot of improvement in him. Meanwhile, Bazzo is younger and rawer, plus dealing with a family tragedy that will rightly take up most of his focus to start the year, but played nine of the last ten games last year and did about as well as could be expected in a backline regularly under siege.

McGovern isn’t getting any younger, and for the sake of both team balance and long-term planning, one or both should be groomed to take up the mantle of number one key defender for the years to come, while Barrass is still in his prime.

As for the smalls, it will likely be a last hurrah for Shannon Hurn this year, but the 2018 premiership skipper still has plenty to provide by way of experience and shrewd ball use coming out of defence.

It’s hard to see him finishing in the VFL, especially given the Eagles’ other small defender options – think Alex Witherden, Brady Hough, Liam Duggan and new recruit Jayden Hunt – are all younger and whippier, but far less reliable with ball in hand.

What will also be interesting is whether Tom Cole, after missing the entirety of last season through injury, returns to being a first-choice player, or whether someone like Josh Rotham, a bigger body and better kick, is preferred. Simpson has hinted in pre-season that Cole’s experience, as one of the Eagles’ more lesser known 2018 premiership players, gives the side a handy boost – read into that what you will.

In his time at the Demons, Hunt certainly knew how to aimlessly blaze away with ball in hand, and for one of the quickest players in the league wasn’t really encouraged to tuck the ball under his arm and embark on long, eye-catching runs all that often after bursting onto the scene in 2016-17 doing just that.

The Eagles, from all reports, are trialling an attack-first, speedy style of play in pre-season. If that eventuates, it will suit Hunt down to a tee. And surely the Eagles wouldn’t have hunted him (pardon the pun) if that wasn’t exactly what they were trying to achieve?

Another interesting tidbit from pre-season out west is the use of Elliot Yeo. It’s been a while since the 2018 best and fairest winner was at his explosive best after a nightmare run with injuries, but when up and fully fit is clearly a first-choice midfielder.

However, Yeo has also regularly shifted behind the ball when not in the midfield rotation, a role he excelled at during 2017 and in his early years at the Eagles. Yeo is a big body, reads the play nicely, and could be relied upon as a stable head behind the ball, if indeed that is his resting spot.

With plentiful midfield options, Yeo could easily start matches at half-back, move onto the ball in short, sharp bursts, and then return into defence to spend most of his game.

Shannon Hurn (Photo by Will Russell/AFL Media/Getty Images)

Midfielders

The root of the Eagles’ issues in 2022 started in midfield. With Yeo frequently injured, veterans Andrew Gaff and Luke Shuey well short of their best and nowhere near enough young hopefuls fighting for their spots in the WAFL, they finished last for contested possessions and fourth-last for clearances. And that’s without even mentioning the countless times they had the ball but coughed it up with diabolical skill errors.

Little wonder, then, that Simpson is advocating a go-for-your-life style; not only does he have young, fresh legs on hand to carry the game plan out, but it’s also obvious that a slower, safe ball movement system would be disastrous for the Eagles.

Some of the starters are obvious: Tim Kelly will be a permanent on-baller if and when fit, as will skipper Shuey. Dom Sheed played just one game last season, but the fact he attended 88 per cent of centre bounces in it and has spent the summer training as an inside midfielder, it would be shocking for Simpson to suddenly move down a different path.

Gaff, who has looked more locked-in than at any point in the last three or four years, provides stability, good ball use, and even the occasional hard ball get on the wing. Expect to see a number of candidates float along the other wing this season: the pace of Jack Petruccelle, the hard ball skills of Greg Clark and the youthful exuberance of newbies Elijah Hewett and Reuben Ginbey, just to name a few.

All have strengths and weaknesses, but notably, the man Adam Simpson has turned to in pre-season is none of them. Luke Edwards has been up and down in his 11 games as an Eagle after being taken in the 2021 draft. Interestingly, despite his size and concerns in his junior days over his taken, Simpson has been trialling him on the opposite wing to Gaff in the Eagles’ main team across the pre-season.

At 20 still, Edwards is another youngster who the Eagles need to get game time into; with so many inside midfield choices, turning him into an outside runner might be a clever move.

Ginbey has impressed all the right people at the Eagles this pre-season, and with Campbell Chesser still less than fully fit after injury wiped out his debut 2021 season, Ginbey can easily be blooded early without the side losing much in the way of experience.

As for on the inside, Jack Redden’s departure opens up possibilities. Notably, Redden was shifted out of the core midfield group in the final rounds of the season, with mid-season pick Jai Culley effectively replacing him as tenacious tackler and in-and-under ball hunter.

Culley isn’t as smooth-moving as Kelly, or Gaff, or Shuey, but at 193cm, he’s the prototype of the modern big-bodied midfielder. It’s hard to see him not spending plenty of time around the ball.

As for the ruck, Nic Naitanui hinted at times near season’s end that he may be capable of rucking solo again after four years with a partner. If picked, that partner would most likely be Bailey Williams, who gives it his all despite being more limited in every way than the quicker, more skilful and more athletic Naitanui.

If the Eagles do go down a specifically youth-oriented path, then Ginbey’s fellow draftee Elijah Hewett should also get a look in; but given the Eagles’ midfield seems to have, if balanced right, enough depth to hold firm, he may have to spend most of his time in his early years at the club warming the pine.

(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Forwards

The Eagles weren’t just bad at winning the ball and driving it inside 50 in 2022 – they were horrendously so. They ranked dead last, three per game behind NORTH MELBOURNE, for inside 50s last year, so it’s of little surprise that only the Kangaroos (again) outscored them in the home-and-away rounds.

Making matters worse, their leading goalkicker from last year in Josh Kennedy won’t be around after his retirement announcement. It will take a while before the hugely talented Oscar Allen is ready to replace him – especially coming off a season ruined by injuries – so in the short term the pressue is right on Jack Darling as the number one man unless Jake Waterman improves out of sight.

With 34 goals to Kennedy’s 37 – and from six fewer matches – Darling battled gamely when it was him against the world last year, but all the cards were stacked against him. Spearheading the Eagles’ forward line won’t be easy, but surely the supply can’t be as limited and horrid as it was last year?

At ground level, the loss of Junior Rioli was a bitter pill to swallow, but in Liam Ryan and Jamie Cripps the Eagles have plenty of small forward cover. Both struggled mightily to impact at senior level, Ryan managing just 19 goals across 17 games and Cripps’ year off to a rough start through injury.

A decision, therefore, will have to be made over whether resting midfielders, in particular the likes of Yeo and Kelly, could rest forward to provide more aggressive options, or whether another pressure small forward like Jack Petruccelle earns the nod.

Yeo is unlikely to do so, but Kelly, Culley and maybe even Gaff could all legitimately work as part-time forwards, though their disposal counts would take a sizeable hit.

For the first time in more than a decade, the Eagles have no king. Kennedy is gone, and with it, a significant portion of goals in last season’s epic hellscape.

Is Allen ready to take on the mantle of number one forward? If he is, the Eagles might just have a prayer at finals: if not, well then, it’s going to be a looooong year.

(Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)

West Coast Eagles Best 23 2023

Backs: Shannon Hurn, Tom Barrass, Rhett Bazzo

Half-backs: Elliot Yeo, Jeremy McGovern, Liam Duggan

Centres: Andrew Gaff, Tim Kelly, Luke Edwards

Followers: Nic Naitanui, Luke Shuey (c), Dom Sheed

Half-forwards: Jai Culley, Oscar Allen, Jamie Cripps

Forwards: Jake Waterman, Jack Darling, Liam Ryan

Interchange: Tom Cole, Reuben Ginbey, Jayden Hunt, Bailey Williams

Substitute: Elijah Hewett

Emergencies: Greg Clark, Harry Edwards, Alex Witherden