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The father of seriously ill West Coast forward Jake Waterman is fuming over the club’s handling of his son’s condition in the latest drama to engulf the battling club.
Chris Waterman said after the Eagles sent Jake home sick it took four days for them to make contact and by that stage he was in hospital receiving treatment for ulcerative colitis.
Jake Waterman was sent home to Perth on the morning of West Coast’s 122-point loss to Adelaide in Adelaide on June 10, before checking into hospital two days later. His dad felt the club should have checked on his son more regularly once he fell ill.
Waterman snr, who played 177 games for the Eagles and won flags in 1992 and ’94, told SEN Radio that his son was suffering from nasty stomach infection which has caused him to miss their past two matches.
“The club’s got a lot going on obviously, but the family and friends are 24/7 around the clock checking in on him just to make sure everything’s right,” he said.
“They could have probably reached out a bit earlier to check on him, I would have thought. To send him home from Adelaide pretty crook and to find out when he was in hospital on Monday night was the first time they contacted him … it was a bit disappointing.
Jake Waterman. (Photo by Daniel Carson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
“I would have thought they’d reached out and just checked on him. Since then, they now know it’s pretty serious and they’ve got to do what they can do. They’ve got to act on it and make sure they keep their eye on him if they want him on the list.
“He’s a 25-year-old coming out of contract. Put some time into him I would have thought.”
Jake is unsure when he will be able to play again. St George Illawarra fullback Cody Ramsey has been ruled out for the entire NRL season after he was struck down with ulcerative colitis.
“He’s hopefully on the improve, but how long it takes and if it’s a full recovery, We’re still unsure whether he lives on medication for the rest of his life or not, but it’s still not sure.
“The final stage is potentially surgery, we’re hoping we don’t get to that and we’re hoping that the infusions will settle the inflammation down.
“It’s all just a wait and see and just hope at the moment.”
Eagles coach Adam Simpson said he tried to make contact with the player while he was in hospital, but to no avail. “A few text messages here and there but no response,” Simpson said. “He was quite ill at the time.
“I was unaware (of how serious it was) … in the early stages, and then it got quite severe and I still don’t know the full extent of the situation. But it’s not great. Our heart goes out to him.”
No one can doubt the courage of the 25-year-old Eagle.
“The two games leading in, he was in hospital just before the Essendon game, he had infected finger and stomach,” Chris said. “I rang him on a Saturday morning in the Collingwood game and he was no good, had a reaction to some more antibiotics.
“He basically said both Saturday mornings, ‘Dad, I’ve got to play, we’ve just got no numbers’. Then, when I rang him Saturday in Adelaide, he was basically curled up in a ball. I said, ‘Ok, it’s got a bit more serious’, and they (West Coast) texted me and said they’re sending him home.”
West Coast’s general manager of football Gavin Bell released a video on Monday night stating that various people at the club, including himself, regularly checked in on Waterman once he was sent home from Adelaide.
There has been more drama at West Coast with premiership hero Will Schofield blasting their decision to part ways with Warren Kofoed, saying the long-time strength and conditioning manager shouldn’t be the fall guy for the club’s woes.
The Eagles announced on Monday night that Kofoed, who has been at the club for 15 years, will step down from his position at the end of the year “to pursue other opportunities”.
It comes amidst a crippling injury run that has heavily contributed to West Coast winning just three of their past 40 matches. The Eagles hit rock bottom last Saturday when they lost to Sydney by 171 points.
Calls are growing for Simpson and chief executive Trevor Nisbett to be sacked, and Schofield was left stunned when the news came out of Kofoed’s impending departure.
“What a remarkable time to release this,” Schofield tweeted. “I’m sorry, but he ain’t and shouldn’t be the fall guy for this.”
Adelaide’s Ben Keays has been fined by the AFL for tearing Mason Cox’s protective eyewear off his head in a fiery clash during Collingwood’s two-point comeback win.
Cox dragged the Magpies back into the contest with consecutive goals during the last quarter and celebrated the second in Crows defender Josh Worrell’s face.
The confrontation sparked a fierce melee, with players from both sides rushing in to take part.
Keays was one of the first, reaching up from behind Cox and ripping away the 211cm ruckman’s goggles.
The action drew a ‘misconduct’ charge from the AFL’s match review officer, with Keays fined $1500.
It can be reduced to $1000 with an early guilty plea.
Earlier this season, North Melbourne captain Jy Simpkin was fined for taking St Kilda player Mattaes Phillipou’s GPS unit out of his jumper and throwing it away.
And Collingwood defender Nathan Murphy was fined for pulling down the shorts of GWS forward Aaron Cadman.
Last year, Hawthorn’s James Sicily was fined for tearing off Western Bulldogs forward Aaron Naughton’s headband.
Cox has worn the prescription eyewear all season after being given approval by the AFL to do so.
They are worn to correct a vision problem caused five years ago when he was poked in the eye, sustaining damage to his retina.
AFL umpires boss Dan Richardson concedes Adelaide captain Jordan Dawson should have been paid a free kick in the dying seconds of his side’s heartbreaking two-point defeat to Collingwood.
The Crows were overrun in the last quarter of a pulsating contest at the MCG on Sunday, leaving them clinging to eighth spot on the ladder.
Controversy erupted in the desperate final moments when Dawson was denied a set shot to win the game after high contact from Collingwood’s Jamie Elliott.
Crows ruckman Reilly O’Brien had driven the ball inside 50 metres, where it was gathered by Dawson, who was immediately crashed into by Elliott.
The ball fell free and the Magpies cleared the danger to hang on for the win – their third consecutive victory over Adelaide by less than a kick.
A furious Dawson sustained a cut lip in the incident and was shown on the television broadcast approaching an umpire to voice his concerns.
On Monday, Richardson conceded the free kick had been missed by umpires, who “had a restricted view of the contest”.
Crows coach Matthew Nicks later wrote it off as “the luck of the game”.
“It’s a tough game to play, it’s a tough game to umpire,” Nicks told Fox Footy. “You know what, that’s probably not paid nine times out of 10 during the year.
“We’d like to think maybe we’re two points ahead when that happens, but we’ll fight on and hopefully we meet that team a lot more times over the next few years.”
If awarded the free kick, Dawson would have had a shot after the siren to win the game for Adelaide from about 40 metres directly in front of goal. “Watching it back, it was obviously a clear free kick, but it’s hard in the heat of the game to notice that,” O’Brien told Network Ten.
“Daws had a pretty fat lip with a lot of blood coming out post-game, so he certainly got some contact, but you can’t really blame it on individual umpiring decisions. There’s a lot throughout the game that go either way. We had our chances and just weren’t able to capitalise late and get ahead.”
Dawson famously converted an after-the-siren shot to snatch victory for the Crows against fierce rivals Port Adelaide in round three last year.
with AAP
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