Game Day West Coast Eagles vs Port Adelaide: Round 6 2023

[Ishmael_]

The beauty of a game like today, is it shows just how bad the list/depth is.

Understandable, given the Kelly trade, Venables, Brander, Ainsworth, Cameron disappearing, plus the lack of picks before that.

Things we often wondered and supposed when we were up and running, without really knowing for sure.

By now, over the past couple seasons you can summise XON, West, Clark, Witherden, Foley, Trew and Rotham aren't really AFL standard and not worth persevering with.

Petrucelle hasn't grasped his chances enough to save his career. SPS probably has. Edwards probably has.

Cut a bunch of that poor depth ^ plus a few more retirements, bring in some more top end draft picks and turn the list over and this will start looking fresh and we'll see some more excitement in 2024.

English as a RFA would certainly help. I'd only advocate that if Naitanui quietly retired though. No point if he's still around.

Agree with the others, but Witherden has shown some mettle this year and some better decision making.

Petch, I can't quite give up on. His game has improved, footy IQ too. Needs a healthy block in the ones before being turfed out.

 

[kranky al]

Are people srs? Bazzo dove on it, didn't get it out. Easy HTB.

Its not that it was paid, its the bunch down the other end that didnt.

 

[TheNewAnchor]

We lost by 40 points which was more or less expected, the usual suspects played ok which was expected, the lesser lights struggled which was expected and we now start thinking about next week when our expectations will follow a similar path.....have I overlooked anything?

 

[Eaglemaniac]

* me people go early these days. Some of these kids haven’t played 3 games and are being written off, when the general consensus is that it takes around 50 games at AFL level to really see the best of players. I’d also wait til they’ve played regularly in their proper position before we write them off too but what do I know?

 

[Eastern Rangers]

This discussion is doing my head in. All this talk about a lack of "AFL" quality is just nonsense, you can have opinions about certain players but the problem is the depth of absolute quality rather than their fitness to be on AFL lists in the first place.

I'm not concerned about us losing senior guys because other players will simply step into those roles and perform at a similar level. For example all Hurn is doing at this stage in his career is keeping a young guy from getting an AFL career.

We've had a lot of bad luck with players like Venables and we've had some poor lists and player management decisions. From a lack of succession planning in the ruck department to the preferencing of dour ball users over attacking ball winners.

Losing Naitanui has hurt most because rucks take time to develop and we relied on his tap dominance for our stoppage game to remain competitive. A month ago Bailey Williams would have been on Darksharks list. In the list management thread the consensus is we need a mature solution even though Bailey is coming along just fine and we've got other options that need exposing.

Ultimately even if everything went right post 2018 we wouldn't be anywhere near a flag right now. I doubt the club will make rational decisions about players like Darling or Sheed who should be looked at as surplus to our needs, not because they're no good but because positionally we can cover them with existing players or others at little expense.

 

[ziad]

This discussion is doing my head in. All this talk about a lack of "AFL" quality is just nonsense, you can have opinions about certain players but the problem is the depth of absolute quality rather than their fitness to be on AFL lists in the first place.

I'm not concerned about us losing senior guys because other players will simply step into those roles and perform at a similar level. For example all Hurn is doing at this stage in his career is keeping a young guy from getting an AFL career.

We've had a lot of bad luck with players like Venables and we've had some poor lists and player management decisions. From a lack of succession planning in the ruck department to the preferencing of dour ball users over attacking ball winners.

Losing Naitanui has hurt most because rucks take time to develop and we relied on his tap dominance for our stoppage game to remain competitive. A month ago Bailey Williams would have been on Darksharks list. In the list management thread the consensus is we need a mature solution even though Bailey is coming along just fine and we've got other options that need exposing.

Ultimately even if everything went right post 2018 we wouldn't be anywhere near a flag right now. I doubt the club will make rational decisions about players like Darling or Sheed who should be looked at as surplus to our needs, not because they're no good but because positionally we can cover them with existing players or others at little expense.

It is also easy to forgaet that Nic was our best contested mid.