Ochre
Premium Platinum
Yep, McQualter made our list look ordinary, whilst Cox made Grundy, Gulden, Heeney, Warner, Blakey etc look as if they were a team full of All Australians.
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Coach Welcome to West Coast: Andrew McQualter
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HoneyBadger35
Small, bitter, fascinatingly unimpressive.
- Aug 11, 2011
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The system stands up with genuinely good teams for reasonable stretches of games. Our pressure game at its best is game winning stuff (minus a reliable connection inside 50, which is the most important next addition to make). Problem is, it lasts a quarter at most.
I don’t think you can play at 100% sprint and frenetic pressure for a game, let alone a season. We do need to add some ball control back in, and find out who we are when we don’t have the other team on the back foot.
But again, we also had quarters where our defensive zone looked great and teams got stuck on HBF for ages. Q1 tonight a great example.
When it falls apart, though, it falls apart fast.
If we held on against a few of Essendon (2 points), North (10 point), Richmond (2 points) or Adelaide (lol, 9 points) and we end with let’s say three wins…it’s all the same ultimately. No history but much of a muchness.
HT leads: Adelaide, Brisbane, Collingwood, Sydney, Melbourne, Port, St Kilda, Essendon
3QT leads: Adelaide, Brisbane, Port, St Kilda, North
You can see the blueprint they want to follow, it’s missing some key pieces (i50 entries are deplorable) but its best looks good even when we’re playing teams with much better talent on the park.
Needs a few early wins to avoid any media chatter of hot seats while they think of the next phantom trade they can make up, but yeah he’s going to be fine.
I don’t think you can play at 100% sprint and frenetic pressure for a game, let alone a season. We do need to add some ball control back in, and find out who we are when we don’t have the other team on the back foot.
But again, we also had quarters where our defensive zone looked great and teams got stuck on HBF for ages. Q1 tonight a great example.
When it falls apart, though, it falls apart fast.
If we held on against a few of Essendon (2 points), North (10 point), Richmond (2 points) or Adelaide (lol, 9 points) and we end with let’s say three wins…it’s all the same ultimately. No history but much of a muchness.
HT leads: Adelaide, Brisbane, Collingwood, Sydney, Melbourne, Port, St Kilda, Essendon
3QT leads: Adelaide, Brisbane, Port, St Kilda, North
You can see the blueprint they want to follow, it’s missing some key pieces (i50 entries are deplorable) but its best looks good even when we’re playing teams with much better talent on the park.
Needs a few early wins to avoid any media chatter of hot seats while they think of the next phantom trade they can make up, but yeah he’s going to be fine.
- Sep 21, 2004
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Gonna be a lot of pressure on the club early in the season to get early wins otherwise it could just be a snowballing turd like this year
Rd 1 at Gabba will be important then.
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Haha! Cox had a team with around 18 players from last year's Grand Final.
Chalk and cheese.
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I think that will be interchanged with round 1 at night on the Gold Coast
Bender_
X
Fresh off a 6 hour flight, 11:10am 35 degrees with 135% humidity.
We got the year off the usual SCG and Kardinia Park trips.
So there is that to look forward to as well.
Jury still out for me. Significant improvement on Simpson but has fallen into a the trap of throwing good money after bad. Gibney, Hough and McCarthy is the backbone of an elite defence just play them together. Hewett looked average as the season progresses, Ryan well up the ground.. lots of players unsettled and out of position.
Barrybran
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I agree with everything here except the last line. Wins and losses will become a metric for next season but expectations for this should still be very low. We're likely still a bottom five, potentially still even bottom two side next year.
For me, next season will be about centre bounces and inside 50 differential. I still expect us to lose plenty of games because we will be undersized and inexperienced relative to our competition, but if we can improve through the middle of the ground, it'll set us up for 2027 and beyond.
Clarko, Voss and Lyon will be attracting heat before Mini does short of complete capitulation in the first two months of the year.
Barrybran
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No there won't. Short of us being put against the likes of Richmond and Essendon in the first few rounds, anyone expecting early wins is a moron.
Perfect conditions for footy.
Post of the year.
Absolute peak 2025 wce bf bedwetting levels
Frame it and hang it pride of place, it's that peak.
It looked like there were deliberate moments of this tonight where we played kick/mark across the backline to stretch the field. It felt like we were resting with the ball for a few chunks of 45 seconds or so.
Monocle
And the rebuild begins.
- Sep 18, 2003
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Some people still fail to realise, from last year we've lost Barrass, Gov and
Hedwards has gone down from defence.
Add the Reid boys, Waterman, OA and Yeo.
We struggled with those guys.
The media haven't really mentioned us losing our best 4 or 5 Players.
Agree... In over his head and it shows
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Hasselhough
Cancelled
- Aug 3, 2025
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Come off it we have been a tall forward short for 2 weeks . This is a selection issue . Jack Williams just wasting away in the 2s
Bulldogs killed us in the air with 1 extra tall defender and same happened tonight to the point the lizzard went forward as he wasn't needed.
Just shanahan and the pleb bailey williams as our only tall targets .
It's one thing to say we have a poor list but selection blunders seem very common this year
HoneyBadger35
Small, bitter, fascinatingly unimpressive.
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Doing a bit of poindexter work. This seems as good a thread as any.
Youngest team in footy, last year we were the seventh youngest:
Excluding the wins and only looking at how we fared in losses, we're a goal worse this year but with a better percentage in losses (e.g. higher scores for us too). Precious little to read in here.
Interestingly, while you'd assume your team would get older and more experienced throughout the year as your list ages and gains +23 games each week, we've gone the opposite in both, in stark contrast to 2024. Trending younger and less experienced as the season went on.
I maintain that it's just a matter of patience, and that season long we have taken some big steps forward compared to the rudderless end to last season. Wins and losses will catch up, the process is right.
McQualter's biggest issue is not one of his own making - we're all just sick of this because we've been here longer than he has, but laying the foundations with a substantially younger side is a tick to me.
Youngest team in footy, last year we were the seventh youngest:
- Average age of our selected teams this year was 24 years and seven months.
- Second youngest: 24yr 10mth (Essendon).
- AFL average: 25yr 10 mth.
- Oldest: 28yr 8mth (Collingwood).
- West Coast: 76.6 games
- Second fewest games (pending all R24 games): 84.4 games (Richmond)
- AFL average: 104.4 games
- Most: 156.4 games (Collingwood)
Excluding the wins and only looking at how we fared in losses, we're a goal worse this year but with a better percentage in losses (e.g. higher scores for us too). Precious little to read in here.
Interestingly, while you'd assume your team would get older and more experienced throughout the year as your list ages and gains +23 games each week, we've gone the opposite in both, in stark contrast to 2024. Trending younger and less experienced as the season went on.
I maintain that it's just a matter of patience, and that season long we have taken some big steps forward compared to the rudderless end to last season. Wins and losses will catch up, the process is right.
McQualter's biggest issue is not one of his own making - we're all just sick of this because we've been here longer than he has, but laying the foundations with a substantially younger side is a tick to me.
- Sep 21, 2004
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- Norwood & Liverpool.
Still paying for the sins of Simmo.
This is really his first full pre season in charge/decisions/selection
This is really his first full pre season in charge/decisions/selection
- Jul 27, 2023
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McQualter to leave no stone unturned to find competitiveness
Andrew McQualter says he will go as far as using table tennis and handball games to teach his struggling side how to win.
www.perthnow.com.au
Table tennis and handball… FMD. Does he even realise that someone still has to lose?
How about building a proper fitness base so we don’t fade out in second halves and some tactile nous to halt momentum Andrew?
Recruiting blokes that can actually kick and maintain possession instead of turning it over would also go a long way.
I thought he'd been there two years but a cursory google check says it's been one year.
So realistically any discussion about parting ways with him before mid 2027 is utterly insane, and even then if the team is showing signs of improvement that chat doesn't happen.
Mid 2028 if you want to be realistic and give him a proper go.
So realistically any discussion about parting ways with him before mid 2027 is utterly insane, and even then if the team is showing signs of improvement that chat doesn't happen.
Mid 2028 if you want to be realistic and give him a proper go.
Rating Archer over Shanahands as a key forward to the extent that our greatest key forward since Josh Kennedy was playing in defence in the WAFL is a black mark against his record only a premiership will erase.
