I felt like the dumbest person in Australia for going back to Docklands a week after you-know-what, but it was probably my last chance to see a live game this season, and I was nearby enough that it would have been malicious protest not to make a token appearance. Life would be easier in the fringe 'I hope we lose so the coach gets sacked' community, but a) do you really think a club that has somehow ended up with an interim President and CEO within four years of winning a flag is going to make any big call before the end of the year?, and b) have you not studied our previous attempts to try and forcibly alter the course of history.
Thankfully we avoided the natural urge to do anything stupid and comfortably beat a team that has won 11 games in the last four years. Other than a few very brief moments of "for god's sake put them away before they realise we're fragile", this was certainly better than having our dignity sandblasted away last week. We can thank the fixture for this steadier, god knows what sort of post-nuclear nightmare the club we'd be living in if our follow-up to The Great Deeflation wasn't against one of the worst non-expansion teams ever seen in the AFL era.
Everyone else who grew up with the Eagles either as a powerhouse or about to bounce back to powerhouse status, it's hard to believe how putrid they've become. Injuries and the misery spiral of losing every week can't help, even if footy is all about long term ebb and flow they've gone from unstoppable empire to failed state. Just the sort of slopposition we'd lose to in times of crisis right? Well, thank god no, and it was ok to enjoy how we did it, even if you know it won't translate against credible teams.
I don't believe in draft concessions - especially when they could probably trade King Harley Race for several high picks instead of paying him millions of dollars in desperation money - but they should get whatever North did. You'll have to wait a couple of years for North to prove whether it had any benefit (unlike, say, the time the league just handed pick two to Gold Coast in a 'if this doesn't work we'll have to relocate a Victorian team' last ditch effort), but any top team wins this game by 120+ points. Don't worry Eagles fans, your team may soon be playing a mid-season tournament for one premiership point. Which is fantastic except for the fact that there's nothing in this fantasy competition that will make shit sides good, and if you're near the bottom why would you want the Slurry & Sons SuperPoint if it might cost you top draft picks? More abuse of the AFL's mid-season razzle dazzle as details leak out like particularly foul rectal gas.
The other reason for going to this game was the chance to be amongst a rock bottom, possibly record low at Docklands. Somehow they decided that 16,000 people turned up, and whoever posted that figure better hope AFL attendances aren't subject to freedom of information laws. Despite the circumstances, I'm not surprised it pushed beyond the GWS 2015 crowd thanks to relatively lots of West Coast fans turning up thinking they were a chance (sucked in), but come on. According to these figures it's not even the lowest drawing game at the stadium this year. Like old time wrestling, just suspend disbelief even though something obviously phony is going on.
Nobody wants to play a home game at Docklands, but we've done well to avoid doing it since 2016. Somehow, since we were last on hosting duties the AFL's top Victorian cash cow Collingwood has done it 15 (!!!) times. The difference is you can put those people through any sort of torment and they'll turn up due to lack of better things to do, while we're a more discerning (e.g. soft) audience.
For a game where fans required gentle encouragement/kidnapping to turn up, they didn't make it easy to get a ticket. Unlike an MCG home game, you couldn't just open the app and scan in at the gate. And unlike when we last played as the home side, not everyone has a physical membership card. I'm ok with digital memberships but the process went tits up here. First you had to log into your MFC account, then into a Ticketmaster account, to get a barcode which would unlock your ticket. Easy enough on paper, but god knows where the barcode was in the app.
Maybe I was approaching the process with all the care of a Melbourne side trying to observe 6-6-6 rules, but the bastard was nowhere to be seen. This says to look under the event, but as the event didn't exist as far as the app was concerned you were on your own. I wasn't far away from ringing the beleaguered membership hotline and giving them their only polite interaction of the week when it was finally found by logging into the website version of the member site. This was far too much effort for the quality of the game we were signing up to watch, and I wonder how many people lost interest halfway through this process. Not many if the final attendance was to be believed.
Whether club or stadium was responsible, I appreciated the free premium member ticket upgrade to level two. If the top deck isn't an option (and even I'm not arguing for the right to wide open spaces during this fixture) this suited me a lot better than being on ground level and having to watch half the game on the (very) big screen anyway. All good for a freebie, but I wouldn't pay any extra to sit there. Hopefully neither did the pair of Eagles fans in front who found themselves stuck in the middle of 99% opposition supporters. Surely free tickets were being sent to anyone who was on record as ever having lived in Western Australia. Maybe that's how they arrived at the dubious 16,000 figure?
If we allowed last week to get to us, the nice view would've just been of a big pile of shite. As expected, the selection strategy was 'well, the first three quarters were good' and there were limited alterations. Our commitment to getting games into Spargo by the end of the year lasted one quarter, and he paid the price for being the only person 100% involved in the supercollapse. The only other omission was Lindsay, who was shown as 'managed', then made one of the emergencies along with a zero game defender and a spare parts ruckman. This was never tested, but I wonder if he was still in full training during the week in case a midfielder blew chunks in the room pre-game, or whether the 'management' was just them thinking 'what are the chances?' and realising that nobody would really care if we had to replace Jack Viney with Tom Campbell at the dreg end of the season.
I doubt it was the latter, because the sort of loyalty shown to our senior players this year hasn't been seen since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Hence why Harry Sharp was recycled from the Reserves for about the fifth time while our adopted good friend Bailey Laurie was left sitting around with thumb in fundament for the 79th of 80 quarters this year. If you want to make a case off raw VFL numbers with zero context, he's Casey's leader in tackles per game but put your feet up mate, we're prioritising midfielders on millions who can't score from a snap 30 metres out.
After all that Sharp was sub anyway, giving him the dubious honour of being involved in the most substitutions in one season (10 on, 2 off) and tying Toby Bedford and Taj Woewodin for starting in this all-important role the most times. It makes for one of the stranger first seasons with us, but as long as you don't have unrealistic expectations about depth players I think he's been reasonable. Still not entirely sure he needed to play here, especially when Casey had the bye so they could've kept Spargo involved. But we won by lots, and that's all that counts right now.
There was a win for 'give us something else you mad bastards' fans (e.g. me), with a debut for Jai Culley. The more headband wearers the better, but it didn't help my midlife crisis that somebody described as a 'childhood Melbourne fan' was 10 years old when we hired Paul Roos, but I'm just happy there was one child who sat through those years and didn't run a mile. He wasn't drafted until post-flag, so if Simon Goodwin doesn't want to come over and watch the Grand Final at Demonblog Towers over summer then Jai's reviews on the game as a fan would be welcome.
On a day when you didn't have to take things too seriously, he celebrated living the dream of all childhood 'mons fans (e.g. debuting at a 3/4 empty Docklands) with two goals and a hanger. By the end of the game there was an element of Culleymania in the crowd, as people got excited every time he went near it. His solid start might not translate to opposition even close to AFL standard, but he'll always have this performance, and being presented with his jumper by Troy Simmonds who he probably only knows as 'that guy I heard about getting clobbered in a Grand Final'... which happened two and a half years before his birth. No offence Troy, but if we needed a #46 to do the honours I'd have loved a Sam Blease revival. There's also the Dean Terlich option, but it seems rude to ask somebody to welcome a new player when their debut came in a 148 point loss.
For sickos like me, the main event was that Culley had played in 12 games for 12 losses at the Eagles so it would've been flat-out perverse if they'd beaten us here. Maybe these hack sides would find a way to draw and he still wouldn't have been involved in any sort of West Coast win? Fortunately, we did the right thing and finally got part of his career off to a winning start. He's one of only 18 players whose first win came against their original club, and I bet not many played 12 games for the first lot. That's the sort of gimmick record I wanted to set at this stadium, not 'most violent collapse' and 'longest continuous brain fade'.
I had to watch the first quarter via mobile phone on the way to Tumbleweed Central, and you could tell how seriously Fox Sports took their responsibility to this game when the commentators were talking up Daniel Turner's season and the camera never left Judd McVee. Then Kelli Underwood made the questionable claim that "you never know what you're going to get with this unpredictable Melbourne team". Which is like when you never knew what they were going to play next on Triple M, but it was usually Nickelback. Other than one quarter last week, we've been the most reliably average organisation in history. Maybe she was seeing through time to the third quarter, because nobody saw that coming.
It wasn't just the host broadcaster having a moment. Just weeks after Docklands couldn't get the roof to work properly, there was trouble lifting the pre-match net behind the goals at one end. They got there in the end without anyone needing to go full Brad Scott and berate venue management, but halfway through the first quarter I thought they'd have got better value redeploying the net to sweep away a few players and playing 16-a-side like the VFA. It already resembled how you'd picture a game between Camberwell vs Yarraville in 1975, lacking only the Assocation's reputation for violent biff. As an all-in, haymaker laden brawl between these sides would look like a parody, the nearest thing we got was somebody running past Gawn and whacking him in the Gorilla Monsoon memorial breadbasket.
Like the Docklands roof, our forward line costs a lot of money but can't be relied on to work every week. The early attempts at taking advantage of defenders who have been shelled relentlessly for the last five months were disappointing, and the last thing you wanted to do was give the Eagles any hope. Forget the good old days of tanking your way to success, they've currently got two of the 10 losingest players in history, if you tried to piff a game in the same way we did Richmond '09 there'd be a coup.
When all else failed, enter yet again the back from the dead Jake Melksham, who booted one from 50 metres out. We'll ignore that the Eagles only missed out seconds earlier due to goalsquare blundering, the more Melk the merrier. A reminder that before he dicked Harris Andrews around, Jake had two goals in five games and one of them came after starting as sub. At that point the chances of him going on in 2026 were somewhere between none and next to none, now you'd be sad if he wasn't there. I'm sure he'll understand the need to step aside if somebody better comes along, but what are the chances of that happening? He'll be especially important if Fritsch converts his improved end of season form into escaping for another club.
This was Melksham's only goal, and on paper it looks like he had a quiet game but there were two lovely squaring kicks that set up others, and some lovely body work in marking contests that cracked space open for others to mark. I think this is what van Rooyen was supposed to do before we Melbourned the life out of him. After his 50% domination of the Eagles last year, there was sadly no JVRevival here but he did get a free goal in weird circumstances. The Generous Fritsch tour continued when his foot went through sand during a set shot, came off the boot like a bag of same and bobbled to a grateful van Rooyen in the square. There's no such thing as a bad goal, but the rest of the quarter left you wanting less. Even the sort of nutters who want to watch nine standalone games a week wished there was something else on.
Maybe what went wrong last week was a lack of novelty signs held up on the bench. Imagine how much drama could've been avoided if we'd just had a stern, fatherly gentleman display this in the final frantic minutes?
Alternatively, the resemblance to the logo of a 90s wrestler was coincidental, and it had something to do with that big biblical hit John 3:16. Maybe it was a coded plea for John Worsfold to come back and save them? "Whoever believes in him that shall not perish but have everlasting life", apparently. The way they're going it wouldn't matter if genetically fused Norm Smith, Jock McHale, and Napoleon. Andrew McQualter wasn't with us long enough to develop a view either way (unlike, say, Adem Yze xoxo), but while I wish him well in all aspects other than West Coast being good again, his interview for their job must have been a ripper considering how he had the Richmond job dumped on him just as they died, then spent a season with us as the wheels slowly fell off.
If he was just the next assistant coach in line for a job I feel bad for that the timing meant he landed this dud role. The Eagles will recover from rock bottom eventually because everyone other than Fitzroy and University always has (though North might be TBD at the moment), so enjoy it while you can. And may fans of certain other clubs called Geelong endure a similar "get some humility into you" era that will end without them gaining the slightest bit of self-awareness or understanding of what it's like to follow a small club.
Whatever the mystery sign was supposed to mean (and serious question, have we ever deployed a sign with anything more zany than the remaining time, or does this sit alongside curtains on banners and post-goal music as a shit footy trend we've refused to participate in), it coincided with what passed for a revival. Obviously this happened just as I walked into the ground, after 25 minutes of watching us unable to land a knockout blow. We got there in the end, and with some style, but you get the feeling any top team would've posted the final margin by quarter time. I walked in as the Eagles were denied a goal, then saw them kick one that counted, and I understand they nearly got another while I was going up the ramp.
Even if I'll never trust any 3/4 time lead again, I really wanted to stamp our authority on this game instead of leaving open the prospect of a fiasco. Hooray West Coast for coming to the party with a rotten attempt to spelunk their way out of defence, allowing Rivers to start and finish his own goal by smothering, then running onto a handball to goal from close range.
Petty and Fritsch followed on, and by midway through the quarter the margin was 33 points. Bullshit I was falling for something like that again, and wouldn't you know it we didn't get close to another goal for the next five minutes, before the Eagles kicked two and missed another from an easy set shot. Lucky there's no other recent examples of us having a handy lead approaching half time, then conceding the last two and ending up in disgrace.
During the break I was on as high alert for drama as possible for a fixture of this magnitude. That's not hard, because even when nobody's there (or perhaps because nobody was there) they pound you with non-stop noise like you're being interrogated at Guantanomo Bay. I didn't mind having to listen to our fans lightly grumbling, but had to put up with the external noise because this bit of the stadium was a black spot which subjected my cheap and cheerful headphones to more interference than [deleted on legal advice].
Other than both being run by tightwads, you can judge the difference between the MCG and Docklands through their choice of entertainment. One has 'funny' special effects on the scoreboard and syncs footage of a seagull to music so it appears to be dancing, while this place has a 'DJ' who has to pretend he follows the home team and that anyone couldn't do the same job using winamp.exe. It's all shit as far as I'm concerned, but you know the AFL would 100% pick the faux nightclub atmosphere that they think 'young people' like over comedy for the sort of people who yell "he's being doing it all day" 20 seconds into the first quarter.
This, against all odds, is where the game got good. Labelling a third term between these sides as the 'premiership quarter' is a bit cruel, but kicking 10 goals in a rush has been a novelty for the last few years. In fact it was our equal 10th best third quarter of all time, which is fun even if you have to adjust for the opposition bringing the game into disrepute simply by turning up. On a day where we couldn't be persuaded to try radical selection changes, there was a lot more playing on. At first, this just led to more panic kicks and players running themselves into a corner they didn't know how to get out of, but Jesus H Christ when it kicked into gear it was a small reward for some of the dross seen this year.
It didn't start particularly well. The Eagles were piss, but they were under no pressure and could afford to hang around and hope we got nervous again. They almost got the first goal after the break (and who knows which direction things may have gone in), and blew three decent chances before paying tribute to MFC vs St Kilda and standing back to allow the ball to be transported straight down the other end where Docklands specialist Chandler goalled.
We gave it back fairly quickly, but that was about as good as it got for the visitors because they were about to suffer the all-time classic scenario of being done over by the guy who used to play for you. After a reasonable but unspectacular first half, Culleymania erupted when he ghosted in from the side to mark, kick his first goal, then show an appropriate level of jumper tugging excitement towards friends and family in the crowd. This was nice, even when followed by the ultimate fusion of the MFC player and fan experience when his goal was quickly cancelled out by the guy he was playing on. Never mind, because the gates of hell were about to open on the Eagles.
The game may have changed if King Harley hadn't been injured lifting his wallet, but you can't argue with the Grand Final level mental 15 minutes to end the quarter. We're still going to get fisted x3 in the remaining games, and it will take a while to wipe the stain of last week away, but it was nice to beat somebody senseless for once. Let's not talk about how it was close to our first choice side against the WAFL All Stars.
The romp started with Petty doing the appropriate level of theatre to win a free for a light push somewhere in the region of his back. He took a couple of good marks inside 50 during this game but for the love of all that is holy, can they please take into account the shattered opposition and not think that playing him down there all next season is a good idea? In an emergency, as a surprise, or when needing goals late in a game yes, but not permanently. Unless - and the idea of this happening is so silly that it's barely worth discussing - they find a big marking forward who can take the heat off van Rooyen and allow Petty to play further up the ground. But if you think those two can thrive without the closest we can find to Jeremy Cameron being parachuted in then I've got a pyramid scheme you could transfer your life savings to.
I think that free sucked the life out of the Eagles like an industrial strength vacuum cleaner, because party time erupted from there. van Rooyen getting another push in the back free proves my theory that the umpiring will always be wonky so for god's sake just make some sort of contest inside 50 and hope that they give you the benefit of the doubt. You can't win mystery frees when the ball has just been punted directly into the hands of a defender. The guy who committed the alleged infraction looked like he wanted to tell the umpire to GAGF and he may as well have done it because we kicked the goal anyway.
Just to prove everything was going our way, barely a minute later the ball landed with Viney after a stoppage in the pocket and he just casually sliced it through like somebody pissfarting around at training. It was fair reward for a very good game where he was clearly trying to have an influence and make sure all the good work wasn't wasted again. Also, please appreciate the genuine joy from Chandler as it went through, and the loss of will to live by the defender closest to goal.
For fans of saying "oh no, not again", the margin was 45 points late in the term. I was hoping we'd get another and leave the 3/4 gap on the exact same number as last week. But we couldn't help piling on goals, and the only experimentation on offer was Gawn kicking around the corner from practically the top of the square. There was actual groaning from some misfits in the crowd when he lined up sideways, but traditionalism be buggered, I just want them to go through so he's welcome to kick backwards over his head if that helps.
Kicks from Culley set up both the Gawn, and Petty to pull down the best contested mark he's ever taken inside 50. The only person with more goal assists was poor old Harry Edwards, who gave away what I'm sure was his third free kick leading to a goal - even if Champion Data has done him a solid and only given him two frees in the official stats. The next one wasn't his fault, as we pulled off a lo-fi Mad Minute when Fritsch launched a set shot from well beyond where you'd expect him to convert. When you're hot you're hot, even if the opposition had relocated to the morgue.
That left us 63 points up, setting up all sorts of "do you think that'll be enough" chortling amongst the live audience and half a dozen people watching on TV. Ideally we'd have gone on and won by 96 points, but I don't blame them for slightly removing foot from pedal, they'd have just been happy to remove the prospect of another week of everyone pointing and laughing at them.
The training drill atmosphere continued when Fritsch grabbed the ball on the turn at a stoppage and completely baffled a defender. Then there was more Culley action as he had one set shot that went horribly OOF, then made up for it by pulling down a screamer at the top of the square for his second. His childhood dreams of kicking goals on debut for us likely took place at the MCG, not this place, but I'm genuinely happy for him to have these moments and hope for more of the same in the future. And the good news is that he's played enough Reserves games that he might get to tick off that other great childhood dream of playing in a VFL wildcard game.
I don't mind the idea of playing Petracca forward more, especially if it creates opportunities for Windsor, Rivers, McVee etc... and wish they'd done this a few weeks ago when it was clear to everyone not named Goodwin that we were rooted. But not if they just swap him with Pickett, because that's wasting nuclear powered forward play. You'll find a midfielder who can do the same things in close-range play, good luck finding somebody who can hoover up ground ball inside 50 like him.
Hopefully they're just trying things, especially when there's still every chance Petracca will depart, and will find a balance once they know who'll be there next year. Langford will be, and by the time he was kicking a third goal in the dying seconds I was ready to give him all the money that's not committed to Pickett.
Before we got to that, junk time descended on the game like a poison mist but there was still time for one of the most ridiculous out of zone umpire free kicks I've ever seen. The guy was about 70 metres away when he thought to helpfully overrule his colleague and I'd like to think they nearly came to blows in the rooms after.
Once the game was well won, we should've deliberately given away a 6-6-6 penalty just to demonstrate the much vaunted learnings from last week. No doubt 'the media' would've labelled it disrespectful, but they would be asked to withhold comment until someone asks a remotely contentious post-match press conference question of Goodwin. I'll take one that's lightly probing at this stage, because otherwise people might start to think that just because we're around the same position as last year everything is ok. If you ignore several fewer wins and some big red flags about danger ahead.
The last three weeks may get ugly (or they may not, I'm happy to be surprised) but this result meant you could go about your business for the next few days without everybody wanting you to comment on an epic cockup. We may as well do a Narrm style rebrand to Can't Play West Coast Every Week for the remainder of the year, but after one of the all-time great own goals in AFL history this was what we needed to get a bit of clear air before the usual turbulence resumes.
2025 Allen Jakovich Medal votes
5 - Jack Viney
4 - Max Gawn
3 - Bayley Fritsch
2 - Daniel Turner
1 - Jai Culley
Apologies to Chandler, Langford, Petracca, Petty and Pickett
Leaderboard
And that is officially your lot, with 15 votes left to play for, Max Gawn cannot be beaten for the Jakovich. This is his third title, after wins in 2019 and 2024. He is now outright third for multiple victories behind five time winner Nathan Jones, and four time Clayton Oliver. A well-deserved victory, and if you disagree I'll fight you in the carpark of Swan Street Coles.
Other than the Stynes, which Max had his name on about 21 seconds into Round 1, the minor awards remain up in the air. Turner is closing the gap on Bowey in the Seecamp and will get ample chance to demonstrate his defensive powers in the next few weeks, while Langford is probably home in the Rising Star (unnamed for another year) unless Lindsay returns from management with near religious fervour. Watch this space.
55 - Max Gawn (WINNER: Allen Jakovich Medal for Player of the Year and Jim Stynes Medal for Ruckman of the Year)
34 - Kysaiah Pickett
24 - Jake Melksham
20 - Jake Bowey (LEADER: Marcus Seecamp Medal for Defender of the Year), Christian Petracca
17 - Daniel Turner, Jack Viney
16 - Clayton Oliver
13 - Steven May
11 - Kade Chandler, Bayley Fritsch, Harvey Langford (LEADER: Rising Star Award), Tom McDonald
9 - Ed Langdon
8 - Christian Salem
7 - Xavier Lindsay
4 - Tom Sparrow
3 - Judd McVee, Trent Rivers
2 - Jake Lever, Harrison Petty
1 - Jai Culley, Harry Sharp
Aaron Davey Medal for Goal of the Year
The mystery formula for this award is something like quality + context + likelihood of them doing it again, and as nothing in this game was remotely important I can only go off the first and last parts. Apologies to Fritsch basketballing to himself in the last quarter, it's got to be Jack Viney's lightning pick up and close range finish off the side of the boot during the third quarter. We've sorely lacked goals out of nowhere this year, and we're stuffed if relying on him to provide them in 2026 and beyond but this was very nice. Pickett vs Port still in front overall.
Next Week
The alleged fun is over, time to take our medicine for the rest of the year. And next week could be the worst, with Footscray's tall forwards likely to root us vigorously. They just beat a much better than us GWS side by 88, and for all the fun we had this week, if the margin is under 10 goals I'll be astonished. The Dogs might be downhill skiiers but as far as alpine adventures go, they'll be dashing around the slopes James Bond style, while we plummeted off the mountain five months ago. Who gives a rat's if we lose, but I'd like to avoid a pummelling.
Due to Casey having a bye, there's no VFL form to judge off, but when has that formed any part of our selection choices this year? The problem is we've missed the partial free hit game, and now have to pick a side to avoid being humped so I've got to go against my own beliefs and not do anything zany. May as well pick most of the same side, I'll just bust down Sparrow down to the sub to get Johnson into the main side as an extra tall to pinball around with the Bulldog equivalents and hopefully free up van Rooyen to play as a forward all game. Sadly, this may cost Sharp his chance at outright ownership of the most games started as sub.
Now watch them do the sort of wild and crazy shit that we may have gotten away with in the last month for it to go horribly wrong, and for the players involved to be irrevocably tainted by the experience. I don't think I've ever expected a bigger turnaround from an 83 point win to god knows what in reverse but am open to a medieval battle atmosphere that negates their talls. If there's ever going to be a modern version of Paul Peos being pelted with hail at Waverley, let it be next Saturday.
IN: Johnson
OUT: Sparrow (to sub), Sharp (to the couch)
LUCKY: Sharp
UNLUCKY: Johnson, Laurie, Lindsay, Spargo
Final thoughts
This was one step above Jerry Seinfeld mugging the old lady for a loaf of bread but it was the right result for Saturday 2 August 2025.
