Opinion The Best Eagles...Never

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Goroyals22

Norm Smith Medallist
Jun 29, 2014
5,471
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I still maintain zac beeck had more talent in his little finger as a ruckman than mark seaby and if he wasnt totally mental should have played in our grand finals


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Tim Watson
300 odd games
3 Flags and 4 BF's

was not good enough to make the 1992 Premiership side !!!
no games for the year.

Also in the 1992 premiership squad
- Matthew Burton (147 games for Freo and North)
- Paul Gow (7 games for Footscray)
- David Ogg (5 games for Brisbane)
- Peter Freeman (5 games for St Kilda)

None of them could get into the Eagles side.
 

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The Passenger

The passenger, I am...
Veteran 10k Posts 30k Posts Sensible Type WCE Wings Guernsey
Mar 25, 2003
35,681
28,332
I’m intrigued. I wasn’t following drafts back then. What happened here?

The rumour mill went into hard overdrive that the club hid this guy coming into the 2003 draft as he only played one game for his school in his draft year. The general consensus (me included if you search the posts) was that has was going to go top 20 even though pretty much no one had seen him play (again, myself included). A few people reckoned he might even go top 10 and I saw a few posts saying Melbourne would take him at 5 (which they used on Brock MacLean).

He didn't get drafted at all. If you search back through the club boards you can see loads of posts with him as an obvious rookie draft selection. Didn't get rookie drafted. Don't even know if he ended playing any WAFL afterwards.. It's almost like he never existed (the only record of him really anywhere is a high score in the agility test at the draft camp). It was really bizarre in the end.

In reality, back then the punters knew * all about the draft.
 

HawkerHurricane

Inaugural Mt. Barker Eagle, Current Bunbury Shark
Oct 12, 2017
406
908
Bunbury, Western Australia
AFL Club
West Coast
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I had the pleasure of meeting Spider Burton at their pre season training camp at Sacred Heart College when i was about 15
There are a few interesting signatures on here, i don't think Marcus Seecamp was even on our list!
 
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Matthew Burton: 1990-1993

A memorable player in his own right - Matthew ‘Spider’ Burton was the tallest player in league history before Aaron Sandilands came along. The 210cm ‘galloping hat rack’ went onto a respectable 147 game career in the ruck with Fremantle (an original Docker) and North Melbourne (during that weird period where they kept recruiting Dockers), but before all that, Burton spent his formative years on the Eagles list. Perhaps his greatest WCE achievements rank as being the tallest guy in each team photo and his moderately disturbing ‘Ventriloquist and Dummy’ act with club legend Dean Kemp sat on his knee at the Player Review shows. That said, few game-less Eagles went onto more successful careers elsewhere - good on him!


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I had the pleasure of meeting Spider Burton at their pre season training camp at Sacred Heart College (i think, was near Hillarys anyway)
i don't think Marcus Seecamp was even on our list!

Must have been some train-ons at the camp. Morphett wasn’t on our list until 1992 and Muir 1993, and yeah Seecamp was never on our list. He was drafted by Fitzroy at pick 2 in the 1991 draft.
 

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flyinghi64

Premiership Player
Dec 7, 2006
3,591
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Am I right to be salty that the AFL wouldn't make an allowance for us to re-rookie (or whatever it was) Brad Smith, but they made an exception for Essendon and Ramanaskaus?
I was salty AF.
One rule for someone who actually got to play, for Vic powerhouse, another rule for someone who was yet to even debut.
GGgrrrrrrr my neck hairs just went up again thinking about it.
 
I was salty AF.
One rule for someone who actually got to play, for Vic powerhouse, another rule for someone who was yet to even debut.
GGgrrrrrrr my neck hairs just went up again thinking about it.

Nice to know I'm not alone on that front. Was almost as mad as when Misiti did that flying knee into Ben Cousins's hip and there was neither a free nor a follow up report. *en Bombers are a dog club and always will be. Scumbags.
 

MrWoollie

Club Legend
Jul 28, 2008
2,005
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Am I right to be salty that the AFL wouldn't make an allowance for us to re-rookie (or whatever it was) Brad Smith, but they made an exception for Essendon and Ramanaskaus?
I was salty AF.
One rule for someone who actually got to play, for Vic powerhouse, another rule for someone who was yet to even debut.
GGgrrrrrrr my neck hairs just went up again thinking about it.
Me too and even now it still annoys me.

1. We had a genuine case. Two pre-season major injuries.
2. The hypocrisy of the AFL that has always been there. One rule for Essendon or Collingwood or Geelong, a different rule for West Coast or Adelaide.

This was as clear a case of justified rookieing within the rules that has ever been applied for. Should have been a rubber stamp.

And it still rankles that this was the one area that we as a team were absolutely dog-s**te in. Would have been the missing element for an easy 2005 win, with 2006 and 2007 follow up.
 

BBQ Mania

Debutant
Nov 18, 2020
108
262
AFL Club
West Coast
This is really testing the memory, but did Brad Smith have two goes on our list? Something about getting glandular fever, getting cut, playing in Northam for a couple of seasons before going to WAFL. I could be getting my story wrong, was a long time ago now.
 

06Premiers

Premiership Player
Oct 11, 2006
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I'm all for a Bombers hate bandwagon, but Rama was given an exemption since he had a non-footballing injury whereas Smith unfortunately was.

Not exactly a case of #VICBIAS
 

bl4ke

Premiership Player
Nov 17, 2014
3,893
5,371
AFL Club
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Yeah I really thought Cavka was going to be something.

That off season he spent as a giant beetle probably didn't do him any favours.
Was hoping he'd be gut running on the other wing to Gaff for 10 years
 

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