CHAPTER FIVE PART B: West Perth's move to Joondalup, East Perth's move to Leederville (my debate with Brian Atkimson).

West Perth’s move to Joondalup, East Perth’s move to Leederville

The last season I attended nearly every West Perth game was 1998. Since 2004 I have not been living in Western Australia and just return for holidays. I enjoyed attending West Perth away games more than home games in 1998. In fact, because of the move to Arena Joondalup by the West Perth club in 1994, the “home” games in 1998 felt more like away games and the away games felt more like home games because I had been going to places like East Fremantle Oval, Claremont Oval, and Lathlain Park since I was a seven-year-old. By contrast, Arena Joondalup remains a totally foreign place to me. Arena Joondalup feels very different from the traditional WAFL grounds because it has no seating around the perimeter of the ground and the grandstand is literally one side wall of the adjacent, gigantic, multi-sports complex rather than the main focus in and of itself. The grandstand is not open to the public, making the oval, or should we say the “arena”, very much in tune with the elitist spirit of modern corporate football.

It is indeed very hard to fall in love with Arena Joondalup. The lack of seats around the perimeter of the ground is annoying as not everyone likes to sit on grassed banks or to stand up. There was literally a total lack of covered seating at the ground for non-members for several years and, when a tin-shed was later installed, it was placed in the north-west corner (to replicate the situation at Leederville Oval perhaps?), the farthest location possible from the single public entrance which is in the south-west corner. Arena Joondalup, although a WAFL ground, symbolizes everything that is wrong with modern corporate football with the non-members unashamedly and very openly treated as second-rate customers. The original lack of seating under the tin-shed might have been an (ultimately inauthentic) attempt at producing a “retro WAFL look” but clearly the lack of seating under the tin shed was due to financial reasons. (Please note that seating has now been installed under the tin-shed but there is still no passageway through the grandstand for non-members so you still have to walk all around the outer grassed bank to get to the tin-shed from the main entrance.)   

Brian Atkinson, in his excellent book, in personal e-mail correspondence, and in personal conversation (8 July 2011), has carefully outlined his view as to why the move to Joondalup, “rationally”, was the right move for West Perth. He argues in terms of it allowing West Perth access to a large junior network of clubs and players in the rapidly expanding northern suburbs[1] whereas the club’s traditional district, around Leederville Oval, is not a place now where significant numbers of juniors live. He states that the Leederville Oval area nowadays is home mostly to “yuppies and pensioners”[2]. Supporting this view, a look through The Football Budget at the source clubs for colts and reserves players suggests that the areas around Leederville Oval are not supplying junior players beyond a tiny trickle to any of the nine WAFL clubs. In Atkinson’s words:[3]

“I certainly miss Leederville [Oval] as well. Once WP [West Perth] left no one could stop EP [East Perth] of [sic] Subi [i.e. Subiaco] going there. EP’s ground became a soccer stadium. I cover the move to Joondalup in my book. I was not involved at all in the move but I believed it was necessary and still do. Our development zone had dried up with demographic changes to the metro area. The only way WP could obtain that very productive northern coastal corridor development zone was to move into the area. After a 20 year premiership drought at Leederville, 800 more kids became available for development. The result - 5 grand finals and 3 premierships in the 1st ten years at Joondalup. East Perth had the same problem and the only success they have had at Leederville with their 3 premierships was when they had ALL of the champion young West Coast Eagles draftees available to them, which was a disgrace and a blot on the integrity for 2000-2002. And Subi have a huge unfair financial advantage by having access to 500 under cover seats to All AFL games at Subi which they packageup [sic] with hospitality, and receive huge profits”.

Furthermore, in a follow-up e-mail, Atkinson continued as follows[4]:

“The only problem with moving back to our traditional inner city area is that as soon as the next junior boundaries redistribution occurred the West Australian Football Commission (WAFC) would reallocate our old zone back to us and we would lose the booming northern coastal junior zone that has been so good to us. In the early nineties we were given that zone on condition we moved into the area. I was a [WAFC] Commissioner from 1992 to 1995 and I saw what was happening first hand. I have had West Perth people say to me that we could have been given that good junior development zone, and stayed at Leederville. That was never a possibility - the WAFC was very firm that if West Perth stayed at Leederville the club would not get that zone. I can say I don’t like the 52 km round trip to watch a home game, but from a football point of view it has been a great move. The best illustration of that is that when the club won the 1995 premiership, the draft and retirements meant that four years later there were only four of that premiership team left at the club (Brendan Fewster, Steve Trewhella, Brendan Logan, and Paul Mifka). They won the premiership again and practically all of the new players were local juniors. A similar thing happened in 2003 when they were premiers again. Having said all that, I do miss Leederville, but there was no chance that we could have enjoyed the successes we had at Joondalup if we were still at Leederville struggling with our old zone. I remember sitting in the stand during the 20 year premiership drought and saw some terrible thrashings”.

Perth and East Perth are still today in similar positions to West Perth’s former situation at Leederville Oval with declining numbers in their inner-city junior zones, although Perth is somewhat compensated for this due to its access to the burgeoning south-eastern corridor. East Perth and West Perth, in fact, had to combine their junior competition,[5] something that would have been inconceivable even 20 years previously. None of the three “Perth clubs” experienced grand-final success during the relatively long period from 1979-94. Perth’s last premiership remains today its 1977 triumph and its last grand-final was in 1978. Atkinson, in the second e-mail cited above, assumes that West Perth’s move to Arena Joondalup was the primary reason for the end of the 20-year premiership drought in 1995 and for the fact that West Perth won three premierships in the nine-year period which ended in 2003 (and four premierships if we include the more recent 2013 victory). For Atkinson, the move is the primary reason for the premiership successes because the Joondalup area gave us access to a much larger number of junior players.

Kieran James (left) and Brian Atkinson, 8 July 2011.

I cannot dispute Atkinson’s logic here and he without a shadow of a doubt loves the game and the club. However, his main assumption that the premierships were primarily caused by the ground shift, whilst extremely plausible, remains unproven and unprovable. Statistically even the club with the worst zone will occasionally win premierships because it just happens to get a group of quality players together at the same time either by chance and / or by careful planning. Statistically a town of 50,000 people will produce a team equally as good as a team from a city of one million people on occasion even holding all other factors constant. The remarkable success of many Geraldton-based footballers at the East Fremantle club and in the VFL/AFL over the years is testament to this. It cannot be disproven that one or two or even all three of the 1995-2003 premierships might still have been won by West Perth if the club had stayed where it was. Furthermore, Mike B.[6] has asked me why West Perth could not have stayed at Leederville Oval and accessed a zone in the far northern suburbs in the same way that Perth has stayed at Lathlain Park but has a zone extending far past Lathlain into the populous south-eastern corridor? Did West Perth not bargain hard enough in 1993? Why was it one rule for Perth and another one for West Perth? Admittedly one answer to this question could be that the northern suburbs are more “crowded” than the south-eastern corridor with Claremont, Subiaco, and West Perth all having historic and legitimate ties there.

Atkinson stated[7] that if the WAFC attempted to take away West Perth’s zone and push the club still further north then the club could say in response “why not just allow existing clubs such as Subiaco and Claremont to have a second zone in the far-far north so that West Perth’s zone would not move north of its headquarters for the second time”? Based on this logic alone, of course, West Perth could and should have stayed at Leederville Oval and also secured a large far northern suburbs zone back in 1993-94.

Furthermore, there was a nine season mini-drought between the 2003 and 2013 premierships, a mini-drought which was nearly half as long as the famed 1976-94 drought. If the Leederville Oval location can be blamed for the 1976-94 drought then what or whom can be held responsible for the 2004-12 mini-drought? If the mini-drought was just due to bad luck or the strength of opposition clubs can’t we then make the same arguments for the 1976-94 drought?

Moving on, I wonder how many changes in club names and moves of home grounds can occur before a club’s essence is diluted or even lost. The club is now “the Falcons”, rather than “the Cardinals”, and is based at Arena Joondalup. I feel that, if the West Perth name goes, the last link with the old club will also go. Other people may well think differently. Some regard the old club as lost already. For some others, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the red-and-blue colours and / or the unbroken chain of history may be the decisive link between the old club and the new club. Is there an authentic, as opposed to a merely corporate or legal, connection between the old Fitzroy club and the Brisbane Lions? Is the Sydney Swans the “same club” as the club called South Melbourne which used to play its home games at the Lakeside Oval? People would have different views here and those who feel that the clubs are not the same and / or it is just not worth the effort will choose another club, another competition, and / or another code to follow. Fitzroy’s last AFL-era president just before the coerced 1996-97 merger with Brisbane Bears, Dyson Hore-Lacy, wrote in 2000 that: “Very few of the Fitzroy members have gone over to Brisbane. Many, if not most, Fitzroy people have drifted away from AFL football completely”.[8] I can recall a statistic which said that 50% of old Fitzroy fans support the Brisbane Lions; 10% support another AFL club; and 40% no longer follow AFL.[9] Rational arguments will only take us so far as emotion remains an important part of serious fandom in all codes of football.

Moving from Leederville to Joondalup was not just a move “down the street” as was the case when Subiaco moved to Leederville Oval in the 2000s. East Perth and Subiaco were both effectively forced to shift home grounds by the Perth Glory situation and the AFL situation respectively at their former grounds. This is why I have some sympathy for those two clubs’ present situations.

By contrast, West Perth chose freely to detach itself from its community. Unlike in the case of Subiaco’s move, Leederville and Joondalup are totally different areas with vastly different cultures and demographics. The Swan Districts Football Club could survive a move to Midland and probably even to Middle Swan (say to somewhere up near the home of Swan United Soccer Club). However, could it relocate to middle-class Ellenbrook (a shiny new suburb of golf-clubs, Soccer Mums, and SUVs) and still stay the same club with that eternal, mongrel, underdog ethos (that even its detractors respect)?

How far could you move Millwall from south-east London before it ceased to be the same club? South-west London-based Wimbledon FC supporters by and large rejected the club’s 2003 re-location to the North London satellite town of Milton Keynes (72km from London) to become the MK Dons. A new club Wimbledon AFC was formed in response to this rejection. No-one regards the Los Angeles Dodgers as being the same club as the Brooklyn Dodgers except only in the most narrow, literal, legal sense. At our coffee meeting on 8 July 2011, Atkinson added some further thoughts on the move from Leederville Oval. Here he moves away from the purely rational to also give some space to emotional considerations[10]:

“The reason I was happy we left Leederville was because I sat in that grandstand and I watched us get thrashed week-in week-out. We would not have won our premierships without moving and we would not have had access to that zone. ... Since they went to Joondalup they have never been bad or non-competitive, never mind had a period when I said ‘I’m sick of this’, not referring here to a game but to a period. Their period at Joondalup has been highly successful, five grand-finals and three premierships in the first ten years. Since then there have been some exciting times but there has not been a grand final since 2003. Even though West Perth has not had the money to recruit widely, unlike South Fremantle, Subi, Swans now, they have replaced the players with quality juniors from their own district. What I find very satisfying is that when they won the premiership in 1995, four years later when they won it [again] there were only four [1995] premiership players still at the club. When they won in ’03 there were only six members from the ’99 premiership still at the club. Almost all of those replacements were home-grown. From my point of view, I have enjoyed the football at Joondalup much more than the previous twenty years at Leederville. I was not involved when the move was made [Atkinson was club president in 1987-88 and the move was in 1993-94] but I spend half my time defending the move, saying how successful it was. ... The spirit of our club has never been better [although] we don’t get looked after well by people there”.

For Atkinson then, rational factors and emotional factors are inseparable from each other and they have both moved in the same direction since, emotionally, the misery of watching games during the last few years at Leederville is part of the evidence as to why, rationally, the move to Joondalup was correct (because moving to Joondalup gave the club access to more juniors which then fed into the club’s playing performances).

Atkinson does not mention the 2004-12 mini-drought of nine seasons (seven seasons as at the date of his quoted statement) and he does not appear to be unduly alarmed by it. He also perhaps over-focuses on those last few years at Leederville Oval when the club did poorly, especially 1990-92, whilst not recognizing that, from 1976-86, the club never took the wooden-spoon and was seventh only once (in 1979). Being on the bottom of the table for two to three years will befall all clubs as part of the natural cycle of birth-and-death / rise-and-fall and is not necessarily something that Leederville Oval itself can be blamed for. Swans and Claremont both suffered several years of misery in the mid-1970s before rising to become powers in the early-1980s and Subiaco was an even worse basket-case in the decade prior to Haydn Bunton Junior taking over the coaching reins in 1984.

West Perth suffered many retirements and departures to South Australia and Victoria prior to its very poor 1990-92 seasons. The on-field heroes of the cheer squad era (1984-86), the largely forgotten and woefully underrated Brendon Bell; Bradmore; Comerford; the Bewick brothers Corry and Darren; Davis; Fong; Gastev; Kickett; Menaglio; Michalczyk; Mugavin; Munns; Murnane; Perrin; Rogers; and Doug Simms had all gone by 1990 with Menaglio being the last of these great warriors to leave at the end of the 1989 season. The returns of Laidley and Palm were not enough to cancel out all these player losses. The East Fremantle premiership player, Gavin Wake, who was quite a recruiting coup and who gave good service to West Perth, was also gone by 1990. Atkinson is currently one of the prophets defending the relocation to Joondalup on a regular basis to all or any of the detractors and doubters. He will probably be able to persuade some and maybe most people but certainly not all.

The move of sporting bodies towards managerialist leadership styles and economic rationalist ideologies occurred at the AFL, the NRL, and the Australian Soccer Federation (ASF) (now the Football Federation of Australia or FFA) during the 1990s. In the early-2000s, the NRL had to deal with a legal judgement ordering the league to reinstate the expelled traditional club South Sydney Rabbitohs. The AFL’s coerced merger of traditional club Fitzroy with expansion club Brisbane Bears to form Brisbane Lions in 1996-97 angered not only Fitzroy supporters but also many traditional supporters associated with other clubs. Melbourne-based crime novelist Peter Temple, in his 1999 novel Black Tide[11], wrote about the anguish at Fitzroy pub The Prince when it was announced that a corporate person from Brisbane wanted to buy all of the Fitzroy memorabilia on the pub’s walls. Temple’s main character, the lawyer / private eye / debt-collector Jack Irish tries unsuccessfully to motivate Fitzroy fans at The Prince to switch to attending St Kilda games in 1997.

Ex-Richmond and St Kilda players, Rex Hunt and Graeme Bond, write in their book, The Fat Lady sings: 40 Years in Footy[12], about the topics of coerced mergers, ground rationalizations, and the national expansion of the VFL/AFL. About Fitzroy’s last game in the VFL/AFL, Hunt and Bond write: “There was sadness mixed with pride for one of the VFL’s founding clubs ... but also anger and bitterness towards the AFL, which the faithful held responsible for Fitzroy’s demise”[13]. About the failure of the 1996 Melbourne-Hawthorn merger talks to bear fruit, the same authors write:

“The final result was great to see because the game could not afford to lose any more of the traditional [ex-]VFL clubs.

The often bitter battle demonstrated that any merger discussions in the future would be an ill-advised solution to the woes of any struggling Melbourne-based teams”.[14]

Afraid of vehement public backlash in its Melbourne heartland, the AFL’s approach since 1996 has simply been to add expansion clubs to its national league instead of relegating clubs or forcing mergers. The AFL competition has had 18 teams since 2012 when Greater Western Sydney Giants (GWS) played its first season. Although the main trend in Australian top-tier sport today is towards corporatism, there is also a secondary move back towards traditionalism, with North Melbourne in the AFL and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs in the NRL both recently reverting to their traditional club names.

My suggestion, as posed to Brian Atkinson by e-mail, was: Why does West Perth not move away from the traditional Western Australian “either-or” mentality to a “both-and” form of thinking? If the West Perth club is determined to stay at Arena Joondalup (I would personally prefer a more old-style, less corporate ground such as Kingsway Reserve in Madeley or the Wanneroo Showgrounds or the Osborne Park Showgrounds aka Robinson Reserve[15]), why not play three or four home-and-away games a year at Leederville Oval? They might attract good crowds of 8,000 or 10,000 people if managed carefully and advertised well.

We should not forget that a crowd of 20,112 people suddenly turned up out of nowhere to watch the last West Perth game at Leederville Oval on Sunday 22 August 1993[16], which was ironic because, if the club had had average home crowds of even one-third of that number in 1993, it may not have had to move to Joondalup. The photograph on p. 219 of Atkinson’s It’s a Grand Old Flag shows West Perth’s “golden oldies” teams warming up in front of the huge crowd on the old Leederville Oval scoreboard bank (now largely gone) on this day in August 1993. Some morbid people will come out of the woodwork to watch a club (strictly speaking an era not a club) in its death agonies. There are still literally thousands of West Perth fans and ex-fans lying dormant out there in the inner- and outer-northern suburbs stretching 30 kilometres from Leederville through Tuart Hill through Nollamara through Balga through Greenwood through Carine and up to Joondalup. Many of these thousands were part of the crowd that day, 22 August 1993.

Significantly, the NRL clubs St George Illawarra Dragons and Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles have kept their cramped, quaint, traditional, inner-city grounds at Kogarah Oval and Brookvale Oval respectively. St George even chose to host a final recently at Kogarah Oval in front of 18,000 diehard St George supporters rather than in the cavernous open spaces of Aussie Stadium where 60,000 people might have attended with St George fans not necessarily being a majority. Although part of the terms of the merger agreement between Balmain Tigers and Western Suburbs Magpies, it should be pointed out that three NRL games per year are still played by NRL club Wests Tigers at Balmain’s traditional ground Leichardt Oval, the NRL equivalent of Victoria Park or Windy Hill. A Friday night telecast match on 24 June 2011 between West Tigers, the home team, and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs was played at Campbelltown Stadium (formerly Orana Park) in Sydney’s outer south-west fringe. The ground, previously home ground to Western Suburbs Magpies and Newtown Jets and now venue for a few Wests Tigers home games each season, was nearly full to its 21,000 capacity although it was just 7 degrees Celsius at kick-off time. Michael Ennis of Canterbury-Bankstown spoke to the media on receiving his Man of the Match award and stated how much he enjoyed playing on such an old-style, traditional ground.

West Perth could follow this West Tigers’ model by playing some home games away from Arena Joondalup including a few games back at Leederville Oval (say between one and four games a season). However, as few Australian Rules Football fans in the southern states follow rugby-league, many of the game’s fans and administrators are not knowledgeable about worthwhile and plausible alternatives to the status quo which rugby-league has already tried. We do not even need to look to rugby-league for an alternative solution. In the SANFL, Woodville and West Torrens merged to form Woodville-West Torrens Eagles in 1991. Most home games are played at Woodville’s Woodville Oval. However, former West Torrens’ supporters are not forgotten. Two or three night home games per year are played at Thebarton Oval (the former home of West Torrens) which is also the merged club's pre-season base.

Like the AFL and NRL, the WAFL was also hit by the corporatization trend during the 1990s, even though the WAFL’s most attractive aspect remained then and remains today its “retro” appeal to a largely older generation of football supporters. It has to be said that applying managerialist principles and ideologies at that second-tier level has, on occasion, looked quite ridiculous. During the 1990s the WAFL changed its name to the trendier “Westar Rules” (1997-99) and encouraged club mergers, relocations, and ground-sharing arrangements. The 2000s saw the yuppification of Leederville Oval so that the now “boutique ground” allegedly merges seamlessly with the inner-city, latte culture of nearby Oxford Street. This redevelopment suggests a certain naivety that assumes that the Oxford Street-Mt Lawley latte set is the same demographic that does or might conceivably watch WAFL football games if only the football grounds themselves became trendier.

Basically, the WAFL in the 1990s hired managerialist CEOs and it attempted to shamelessly follow the same strategies and ideologies used in the AFL and North American professional sports. Fixture dates and times were fooled around with, the most silly and thoughtless of all being the 29 March 1987 scheduling of a West Perth versus East Perth game (the pride of the old way of life) after the West Coast versus Richmond debut VFL/AFL clash at Subiaco Oval (the first game of Modern Football)[17]. Of course, the crowd streamed out of the ground at the end of the VFL/AFL fixture, leaving only a handful of people in the ground to see the WAFL match[18]. This must have been incredibly disheartening to the WAFL players and officials involved. The WAFL deserved much more respect than this and the WAFL leaders did appear to learn from this day and similar mistakes for a while, shifting back to all Saturday afternoon WAFL games in 1988, a year in which WAFL crowds stabilized or even grew slightly.

However, clubs such as Perth Demons were under continual pressure during the 1990s to merge or to relocate to the outer metropolitan area. Only West Perth ultimately left its inner-city ground, and the club now “stands out like a sore thumb” “all dressed up and nowhere to go” much like the former Soviet Union after the October 1917 Russian Revolution when it was expected that other European countries would soon follow the Soviets’ lead and become communist. Joseph Stalin famously invented the doctrine of “socialism in one country” whilst West Perth’s current doctrine appears to be “relocation at one club”, i.e. it does not admit that it possibly jumped the gun but just keeps on its operations regardless, hosting traditional clubs at Joondalup and visiting those clubs at their inner-city traditional grounds including the farcical situation of playing “away games” against both Subiaco and East Perth at Leederville Oval.

After Peel Thunder was added to the WAFL competition in 1997, it was realized that, firstly, the traditional clubs were the league’s greatest assets and, secondly, it is very difficult to start up a new club that can compete on the same level on the playing field as the traditional clubs. The on-field failure of Peel Thunder over many years meant that the traditional WAFL clubs were accorded more respect by all stakeholders, including the WAFC/WAFL hierarchy, and the forces pushing relocations became much less vocal. In that sense, Peel Thunder has proven to be a blessing to all of the traditional clubs although the traditional clubs have proven to be far from grateful.

It appears unlikely as at the date of writing (6 January 2017) that any other WAFL club will relocate other than probably East Fremantle back to Fremantle Oval for senior-team home-games only. South Fremantle effectively cannot move in any direction as it is bounded by the river and the ocean to the north and the west, by East Fremantle to the east, and now by Peel Thunder to the south. Perth apparently is no longer considering the possibility of relocation[19] with the legendary Perth premiership coach Ken Armstrong expressing a view, in Perth’s official history book[20], that to do so might cause Perth to lose its essence and to die. Armstrong[21] also refers to the fact that many of the ex-Sunday Football League clubs exist in the south-eastern corridor already, clubs now not so much smaller than Perth itself, and it is not easy to win new fans. Various trial home-and-away fixtures played in the south-eastern corridor by Perth have attracted crowds no bigger than, and sometimes smaller than, the crowds that the club regularly attracts to Lathlain Park.

However, Perth’s case is arguably not exactly the same as West Perth’s since Perth is able to keep its south-east suburban zone whether it shifts further down the south-east corridor or stays where it is in the extreme north-west corner of its zone. Given this dynamic, it may as well stay where it is because tradition is on the side of Lathlain Park and Lathlain Park is much more accessible to the majority of away team supporters, and also many or even most Perth supporters, than are the possible mooted relocation location areas such as Gosnells, Maddington, and Kelmscott.

This leads us on to an important related point that West Perth and the WAFC completely ignored with the move to Arena Joondalup. The old, inner-city, traditional grounds may look like obsolete relics to a casual observer but, if WAFL supporters are now scattered throughout the metropolitan area, the inner-city grounds still have the advantage that they are not too far removed geographically from anywhere or anyone. Atkinson refers to this point in his second e-mail reproduced above. Away team supporters of other WAFL clubs, especially south-of-the-river clubs, can more easily travel to Leederville Oval than to Arena Joondalup. Few away team fans presently visit Rushton Park in Mandurah or Arena Joondalup which is why average crowds at these two remote venues tend to be smaller now than average crowds at Bassendean Oval (the pace-setters for crowds in the current era), Lathlain Park or Fremantle Oval. Because of the relentless urban sprawl that characterizes modern-day Perth, it is a 100-120 kilometre round trip from Mandurah to Joondalup or from Armadale to Joondalup. Atkinson refers (above) to his 52 kilometre round trip to West Perth home games at Arena Joondalup from his house in Wembley Downs.

The absence of away team fans definitely has a negative effect on match-day atmospheres at Rushton Park and Arena Joondalup which lowers crowds yet further in a vicious cycle. In fact, the online journalist John Devaney of Fullpointsfooty.net documents that West Perth’s average crowds for 1994 at Arena Joondalup (4,011) were smaller, by a fair margin, than those for 1993 at Leederville Oval (5,218)[22]. I suspect that what happened in 1994 was probably a large drop in away fans attending West Perth home games as well as a drop in the number of West Perth fans living in the vicinity of Leederville Oval going to Arena Joondalup. It would be interesting to know how many West Perth supporters are Leederville Oval-era fans and how many are people who go to the games primarily because they live close to the new oval in Joondalup. Of this second group how many are old-time West Perth fans and how many would basically follow any club if it was based in the Joondalup region, i.e. their primary loyalty is to the region rather than to the WPFC?

A worrying factor regarding the future of the WAFL competition is that crowds, as far as I can ascertain, are made up of mostly men (and a few women) aged over 30 and children aged below 13. The children enjoy being able to kick footballs on the oval at breaks and hear the coaches address the players at quarter time and three-quarter time. However, key demographics that do not seem to attend WAFL games in large numbers presently are teenagers and people in their twenties. In one of the crowd pictures on the WAFL Golden Era website, taken at the Perth versus Swan Districts’ game at Lathlain Park on 2 July 2011, there is a young guy in his twenties, looking remarkably like the late Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols from the back, who is in centre-shot of the group of Perth supporters standing on the concrete terraces in front of the can bar. This guy stands out also for being the only supporter visible in this crowd picture who is clearly and unarguably aged in his twenties. As this book has demonstrated, teenagers were a key element of loyal WAFL support in the 1980s and they would regularly travel to WAFL grounds on Saturday afternoons on the trains and buses in their twos and threes or even all alone to meet up with other young people at the grounds.

As the current group of WAFL supporters gets older and its more senior members pass away, the competition needs to be able to replace them with a younger demographic. The WAFC/WAFL needs to think very carefully about this issue as do the nine clubs. The WAFL has probably attracted few supporters, whether younger people or interstate or international migrants, who were not already supporters during the WAFL’s Golden Era which concluded in 1986. A person who was 8-years-old when West Coast was formed in 1986 is now 40-years-old. Such a person is probably not a dedicated WAFL supporter having no personal memory of the WAFL’s Golden Era. Perhaps consideration could be given to granting free concession entry to WAFL games and extending this to tertiary students aged 25-years or under plus free train travel. I am aware that finances are always a problem, but the WAFL and its clubs should also consider advertising more extensively in youth-focused, high-school, university/TAFE, and community-based publications.

[1] Atkinson, It’s a Grand Old Flag, p. 222.

[2] Source: Personal conversation, 8 July 2011.

[3] Source: Personal e-mail communication to the author dated 15 November 2010.

[4] Source: Personal e-mail communication to the author dated 17 November 2010.

[5] Atkinson, It’s a Grand Old Flag, p. 222.

[6] Source: Personal interview, 14 July 2011.

[7] Source: Personal interview, 8 July 2011.

[8] Hore-Lacy, D. (2000), Fitzroy (Fitzroy, Australia: Lion Publications), p. 252.

[9] Source: Unknown.

[10] Source: Personal conversation with the author, 8 July 2011.

[11] Temple, P. (2007), Black Tide, Hardcover edition (London: Quercus), pp. 23-7, 60-2, 97-100.

[12] Hunt and Bond, The Fat Lady sings.

[13] Ibid., p. 121.

[14] Ibid., p. 125.

[15] Osborne Park Showgrounds is the former home of the Osborne Park FC until 1983 and the current home ground of the Amateur team. The Showgrounds were used for WAFA finals, and also Grand Finals, after the WAFA was no longer permitted to use the W.A.C.A. The Osborne Park Show is being held there on November 17 and 18 this year 2017 (source: WA Sunday Footy Facebook page, 23 October 2017).

[16] Atkinson, It’s a Grand Old Flag, p. 219.

[17] Ibid., p. 208.

[18] Ibid., p. 208.

[19] This section about the possible relocation of Perth was written prior to the recent redevelopment of the ground. The redeveloped ground is meant to house both West Coast Eagles and Perth Demons.

[20] Cited in East et al., From Redlegs to Demons, p. 151.

[21] Cited in Ibid., p. 151.

[22] Source: http://www.fullpointsfooty.net/west_perth_(3).htm [accessed 6 March 2011].

CHAPTER FIVE PART A: West Coast Eagles’ inaugural playing squad - a West Perth fan's perspective (1987).

West Coast Eagles’ inaugural playing squad (1987)

The official WPFC historian Brian Atkinson states that West Perth sometimes did not receive its fair share of state team representatives in years when the club made the finals.[1] Atkinson comments that: “The failure of any West Perth player to gain state selection in 1984 was a matter of great controversy within the West Perth camp”[2], especially as the club was in third place at the time the team was selected (only to eventually miss the finals). The West Coast Eagles’ initial 35-man squad for season 1987 was also disheartening for some West Perth supporters.

The five West Perth players chosen were: John Gastev, Sean King, Dean Laidley, Paul Mifka, and Dean Warwick with King being a later addition to the original 32-player squad which was first announced at the official launch at Perth’s Merlin (now Hyatt) Hotel[3]. These players were bright and promising youngsters but arguably, with the exception of Laidley and perhaps Gastev, they had not yet developed the consistency or backlog of strong performances to merit selection. The five West Perth players in the initial West Coast squad were clearly chosen, if not at random, then by people largely disrespectful or apathetic towards the club.

Favourite sons of the club, such as Phil Bradmore, Les Fong, and Peter Menaglio were wilfully overlooked although their careers were still active and their playing performances were still strong. Although Brian Atkinson “did not have any strong feelings either way”[4], he states “you would have to include Fong and Menaglio” as the top two players for the club during the drought-era and prior to the formation of West Coast (i.e. 1976-86). Both Fong and Menaglio were named in the club’s “Team of the Century”, Menaglio on the left-wing and Fong as the first rover.[5] Menaglio continued to play senior football with West Perth up until the 1989 season[6] so he was hardly “over the hill” by late 1986. Bradmore’s birth-date is 2 April 1959; Fong’s is 24 August 1956 whilst Menaglio’s is 4 September 1958, making these three players 27, 30, and 28-years-of-age, respectively, as at October 1986.[7] (As mentioned, Menaglio won the Breckler Medal for club fairest-and-best in 1984 whilst Bradmore won it the following year. Menaglio was also equal runner-up behind the three tied winners for the 1984 Sandover Medal.[8] Les Fong was a close runner-up to Menaglio in the 1984 Breckler Medal count and, from 1981-84, Menaglio and Fong shared four Breckler Medals.)[9] Fong top-scored for the club with 14 votes at the 1986 Sandover Medal count, won by Mark Bairstow of South Fremantle, although, astonishingly, there were no West Perth players in the top 24 (yes, read that again, it is not a typo).[10]

Also worthy of consideration for selection by West Coast in late 1986 were Corry Bewick, Derek Kickett, and George Michalczyk. A newspaper report at the time suggested that Darren Bewick, younger brother of Corry, was not chosen because he had elected to remain in Perth for two more years to complete his teaching degree.[11] It appears that West Perth was unfashionable for the corporate set that was running West Coast, compared to players from East Fremantle and Subiaco, despite the fact that West Perth had beaten East Fremantle consistently in 1985. The disrespect shown to the club’s favourite sons, and especially to Bradmore, Fong, and Menaglio, rankled with some West Perth supporters. It would have been a mark of respect to Fong and to the club if Fong had been selected, if only for one or two seasons, in the same way that Robert Wiley of Perth Demons (formerly of Richmond) had been brought into the West Coast squad for 1987 at the twilight of that player’s esteemed career.

West Coast’s initial squad was chosen for the future and, in hindsight, we might fail to realize how young the players were then since now, looking back, we remember the distinguished VFL/AFL careers that many of that initial squad went on to have. Even Phil Narkle was allegedly only 24-years-old despite already having played at St Kilda for three seasons.[12] (In fact The West Australian of 31 October 1986 was in error: Narkle was actually 25-years-old as at 31 October 1986. The ninth 2011 edition of The Encyclopaedia of AFL Footballers at page 627 lists his birth date as being 29 January 1961.) Don Holmes (27-years-old), Glendinning (30), Turner (27), and Wiley (31) were the only inaugural West Coast players aged over 25 as at 31 October 1986 according to The West Australian.[13] It seems that the general principle which guided selection was to only select players aged over 25 if they had prior VFL/AFL experience. Bradmore’s prior VFL/AFL experience seems to have been either forgotten or discounted. In hindsight, at least, West Coast erred with its selection of the five West Perth players in 1987 or it clearly picked players that it had no real intention, in advance, of awarding game time to. King and Mifka managed only one game each for West Coast and Warwick played zero. Early Eagles squad members from Swan Districts such as Kevin Caton (1 West Coast game, 1988); Joe Cormack (10 games, 1988); Don Holmes (23 games, 1987-89); Brent Hutton (13 games, 1988-89); and Don Langsford (zero games) suffered similar fates which further soured the relationship between Swans and West Coast.

At the 1986 Sandover Medal count Laidley was equal second among West Perth players with 13 votes while Gastev was fourth highest with 11 votes. However, Warwick and King were way down the list, polling only two votes each and coming in at equal 15th for the club, while Mifka polled no votes at all. West Perth supporters could be forgiven for having being somewhat mystified about the five West Perth players selected. Had they been picked with only a bare minimum of thought just to make up the numbers with the West Coast leadership having had no serious prior intention of awarding any of them serious game time? Were people like Ron Alexander and Graham Moss unduly influenced by old WAFL club rivalries which led to them give insufficient thought to the selection of West Perth players and insufficient respect to the players who had played best for West Perth in the prior three seasons? West Perth’s 1986 Sandover Medal vote-getters’ list should have been given more respect and consideration by the West Coast leaders.

Apart from Laidley, only Gastev later had anything resembling a successful VFL/AFL career and the vast majority of his games (113 out of 143) were played with the Brisbane Bears. Similarly, Laidley is better known today, as his Wikipedia page writes, for his 99 games for North Melbourne rather than for his earlier stint at West Coast.[14] The 1994 West Coast premiership team featured zero West Perth players or ex-West Perth players. However, Craig Turley did play 115 games for West Coast between 1989 and 1995 and was a 1992 premiership player. A further reason for the my initial dislike of West Coast, which has mellowed only but slightly over the years, was the lack of West Perth players in the team. I support any club playing against West Coast as they are the temporary embodiment of my hopes and dreams.

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[1] Atkinson, it’s a Grand Old Flag, p. 202.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Source: Christian, G. (1986), “Bennett, Turner join the Eagles”, The West Australian, 31 October, pp. 103-4; The West Australian, 31 October 1986, player profiles, p. 102.

[4] Source: Personal conversation with the author, 8 July 2011.

[5] Atkinson, It’s a Grand Old Flag, Appendix 2, p. 270.

[6] Ibid., p. 367.

[7] Ibid., pp. 350, 356, 367.

[8] Ibid., p. 202.

[9] Ibid., p. 202.

[10] Source: The West Australian, 16 September 1986, pp. 87-8.

[11] Christian, “Bennett, Turner join the Eagles”, pp. 103-4.

[12] The West Australian, 31 October 1986, player profiles, p. 102.

[13] Source: Ibid., p. 102.

[14] Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Laidley [accessed 6 March 2011].