Braden Quartermaine: It’s time for WA football to sort out a long-term plan for AFL-listed players in the WAFL

When West Coast and Fremantle joined forces back in 2011 to push for their own stand-alone teams in the WAFL, they sold the concept as some sort of travelling circus that would benefit all. A 52-page document forecast increased gate, bar, catering and signage incomes for the existing WAFL clubs when the Eagles and Dockers came to visit. On Saturday in Joondalup, a paltry crowd turned out to watch West Perth go through the motions against the Eagles and the Falcons had to cancel their pre-match lunch due to the lack of interest in the game. West Coast’s travelling support is negligible and the fans of the traditional WAFL clubs are turned off by the lack of meaningful rivalry, not to mention the dwindling prospect of a competitive match at the moment. The Eagles’ injury and COVID crises have flowed on to the reserves team, meaning they are fielding a side in the WAFL made up largely of amateur standard top-up players. These players are to be commended for putting their hands up and they certainly didn’t back down on Saturday. Despite generating just two scoring shots until three-quarter time, one from a 50m penalty, the West Coast battlers laid the fiercest tackles of the day and never stopped trying, getting rewarded with four goals in the final term in the 80-point loss. But the truth was this was a game that was staged for the benefit of the development of three players – AFL-listed trio Luke Strnadica, Zane Trew and Jack Williams. The rest of the players asked to pull on Eagles guernseys were simply background actors. More than two decades of shifting player hosting arrangements, including splitting players up, alignment clubs and stand-alone teams, has descended into chaotic season-by-season negotiation for West Coast. Fremantle’s alignment with Peel has been more stable but it’s still based around short-term contracts and managing the inherent clashes that come with one organisation wanting to win and the other wanting to develop young players. It’s a mess and it’s time for WA football as a whole to come up with a proper long-term plan – and one which applies to both of our AFL clubs. If the answer to that is stand-alone teams, the WA Football Commission needs to decide whether they want them to be a proper part of the competition or not. Restrictive recruiting conditions placed around West Coast’s reserves outfit since their inception seem to have been based around the fear of the Eagles taking out the WAFL premiership and ensuring that can never happen. They were loosened slightly ahead of this season, but it was too little, too late as far as recruiting went as players committed to rival clubs. If the rest of the WAFL clubs don’t want to risk the AFL stand-alone teams being too strong, then the Eagles and Dockers reserves may as well just play each other every weekend in development games. A West Coast WAFL flag would spark controversy and anger among the support bases of the traditional WAFL clubs. But if their reserves are eligible to take out the wooden spoon when things are going bad, why shouldn’t they be able to win the flag when things are going well? It’s already happened anyway. Nobody thinks the Thunder would have claimed premierships in 2016 and 2017 without their large number of Dockers, but the world didn’t end. The remarkable thing is that despite all the chaos and hassle, the licence fees, the diluted development due to injury and COVID and the brand damage, West Coast are still adamant having their own reserves team is the way to go. WA’s AFL clubs should be entitled to have their players playing together at WAFL level if that’s what they decide, because their financial success ultimately props up the whole system. But while the Eagles cite this year as one of extraordinary circumstances, the new landscape of football department spending cuts, smaller list sizes and the sub rule surely makes the cost-benefit analysis of running your own reserves team more and more marginal. The old system of sharing players around, now regarded as totally inadequate, underpinned three premierships for West Coast. But more than that it reinforced the talent pathway, leaving WA-produced players with their original WAFL clubs rather than ripping them away. With the Eagles set to embark on a rebuild, coach Adam Simpson is adamant they will need their players playing together at WAFL level more than ever. “I think in the long run what we’re doing now will pay us back,” Simpson said. “At the moment, it’s obviously not looking great with our numbers. But realistically we should have 14 to 16 playing every week in that space and then you can see some real growth. “They’ll be a young group coming through together and I like them to be in the same team.”