Swan Districts Football Club
Without a doubt Swan Districts was the club of the early-1980s in the WAFL, i.e. the club which had and has the privileged position of being the Golden Club of the Golden Era. After being easy-beats for most of the late-1970s, with a bottom two position nearly assured, Swans, under the expert coaching of the disciplinarian John Todd, began a rapid ascent up the premiership ladder to the extent that the club played in (but lost) the 1980 grand final against a brilliant Mal Brown coached South Fremantle team that included Basil Campbell; Brad Hardie; Stephen Michael; Joe McKay; the late Maurice Rioli; Tony Morley; and Benny Vigona. The Full Points Footy website comments as follows regarding the coaching style of John Todd:
“Whereas the best Western Australian teams have traditionally been renowned for producing highly-skilled, open, flowing football Todd tended to favour a more ‘Victorian’ approach. His teams were tough and determined, capable of brilliance, but more typically achieving victory by relentless running supplemented with substantial amounts of vigour. It is probably no coincidence that Todd went on to become the first coach to steer the West Coast Eagles into the finals as his style was eminently suited to the dog eat dog desperation of the [then] VFL”.
Perth versus Swan Districts, Lathlain Park, Round 3 (16 April), 1979
I was actually there at that moment in 1979 when there was a symbolic “changing of the guard” between declining Perth (1976 and 1977 premiers and 1978 grand finalists) and emergent Swans (premiers in 1982, 1983, and 1984 and 1980 grand finalists). I was sitting high up in the visiting fans’ section of the Lathlain Park grandstand with my late grandfather Herbert Arthur Acott (1906-99) and his best mate Ernie Henderson on this day in April 1979. In a tense finish, the emergent Swans held on to win by four points to symbolize the end of the Perth era and the start of the Swans’ era. East et al. report that the date was Monday 16 April 1979 and the final score was: Swan Districts 11.12 (78) defeated Perth 11.8 (74). The official attendance was 11,046. The picture on p. 166 of Dawson’s book shows John Todd embracing his chairman of selectors Bob Manning at the end of this game. Dawson writes that: “There was palpable relief in John’s face on the final siren, with Swans kicking only six points in the last term as Perth fought back from a three goal deficit”.
Although never a Swans’ supporter, I was nonetheless caught up in the atmosphere of the game’s tight finish, and I remember running down to the visiting team players’ race (which was enclosed by just a wire-chain fence on both sides and over the top) to cheer the Swans’ players as they left the ground. Years later, in the 1998 WAFL season when my grandfather was 92-years-old and I was 29, I took my grandfather to a Perth versus East Fremantle game at Lathlain Park. It took forever for me to help my grandfather walk up and down the main grandstand’s steps. The late Mr. Acott enjoyed the game (it was be his last ever game of football watched in the flesh) and especially the speed and skill of East Fremantle, the eventual premier team of that year. East Fremantle’s team included the veteran Steve Malaxos whom my grandfather still remembered from his earlier stints at Claremont and West Coast. On a sunny day, the view from the top sections of the Lathlain Park grandstand is magnificent with the tree-tops in the middle distance, the blue sky above, and the hills of the Darling Ranges as the backdrop. It is one of WAFL football’s truly iconic views.
Swan Districts Football Club (continued)
Swans in the early-1980s proved to be a master team and perhaps the last great WAFL dynasty of the pre-West Coast Eagles era to the extent that East Fremantle and Subiaco had their runs halted midstream by the formation of West Coast and most of the better players of both teams went on to join the Eagles. The West Coast Eagles effectively fielded an East Fremantle-Subiaco combined team in 1987.
Prime movers for Swans in the early-1980s were the future Essendon premiership player Leon Baker; Jon Fogarty; Don Holmes; Barry Kimberley; Don Langsford; the Aboriginal brothers Keith and Phil Narkle; Mike and Steve Richardson; and Brad Shine. The slightly more mercurial brother Phil Narkle later played for St Kilda and West Coast (when past his prime and dogged by injuries) and returned to win another premiership with Swans and John Todd (back from his two years at West Coast) in 1990. However, Phil’s elder brother Keith never played VFL/AFL. Both brothers were excellent and fair players and widely admired by all WAFL club supporters. Keith was a mainstream of the Swans’ team and, like the long-serving key-position players Stan Nowotny and Tom Mullooly, had been at the club since its miserable era of the late-1970s. A by then veteran Gerard Neesham helped Swans in the midfield in the early-1980s premiership years; he was still fast as well as physically tough and mentally disciplined. Neesham probably brought some of the self-confident East Fremantle winning culture over to Swans.
The Swans’ 1982-84 premiership teams were perhaps not the most skilful although they were above average in this regard as well. Despite the presence of some brilliant players, it has to be said that “professional” or even “workmanlike” are adjectives that could have been used to describe many of the team’s players, if not the team as a whole, in the early-1980s. John Todd gave his players mental toughness, resolve, courage, team spirit, and self-belief rivalled only perhaps in the WAFL by teams coached by Mal Brown and Gerard Neesham.
However, I believed that West Perth had a team capable of challenging Swans in 1985 as the Bassendean-based club was fast approaching the end of its great era. Most of its better premiership-era players had already left although, ominously for West Perth as it turned out, Garry Sidebottom had returned from his stint playing in Victoria.
Swan Districts versus West Perth, Bassendean Oval, 1985
A trip to Bassendean Oval to play Swan Districts requires a long train journey from the Perth city-centre on the ancient Midland train line (opened 1 March 1881). Swan Districts is the most remote from the city-centre of the six traditional WAFL clubs which are not Fremantle-based. (Fremantle is often regarded as a separate city in its own right.) By WAFL standards Bassendean is a fairly compact ground with the outer grassy banks being less wide and less high than those at East Fremantle Oval, Leederville Oval (prior to its recent renovations) or Lathlain Park. Like a soccer ground, all spectators are relatively close to the play. The famous old stands hug the playing arena closely and cast much of it in shadow in the late afternoons.
Since the formation of West Coast Eagles in 1987, “Swans” has had a reputation, fiercely and jealously guarded, of being the epitome of a traditional WAFL club. Bill Walker of Swan Districts was one of only two WAFL club presidents to vote against the entry of West Coast Eagles into the expanded VFL (now AFL). Even the once vibrant Midland and Guildford districts, at the centre of Swan Districts’ geographic heartland, retain a large proportion of historic buildings and they seemed to have remained somewhat shielded from the economic, social, and demographic changes that the rest of Perth has experienced. The large Aboriginal population suggests to some a more cultural, communal, and non-materialistic way of life compared to other parts of the city. Bassendean Oval used to be a fearsome place for visiting supporters; every corner of it was claimed by some gang or other of Swans’ supporters. Even today, Swans attract larger home crowds than other WAFL clubs and the compact nature of the ground makes a crowd of two to three thousand mostly Swans’ supporters still a fearsome proposition for opposition fans and players.
Although there was and is a members’ stand, the R.A. McDonald Stand, in the ground’s south-western corner, has always contained vocal and hardcore Swan Districts’ supporters of all ages. The stand still contains such dedicated supporters today, although nowadays there are empty seats during the main game. In the WAFL’s Golden Era patrons had to arrive long before the start of the main game to be assured a seat in the McDonald Stand (pronounced as if it had an extra “s” as in “McDonald’s Stand”). My late maternal grandfather Mr. Acott and his best mate Ernie Henderson always sat there, towards the top, in the 1970s and into the first half of the 1980s. I also sat with them there, on three or four occasions, although never when West Perth was the opponent.
On this most memorable day, most probably in 1985, the West Perth cheer squad headed out to Bassendean Oval, from Perth city-centre on the Midland train line. I cannot recall how many people met in the city-centre beforehand. There was probably a sub-group which got on at the city-centre and the long journey then magnified our good spirits, self-confidence, and camaraderie. West Perth had been performing well on the field in 1985 and a win would certainly not have been an unlikely outcome. The cheer squad was in celebration and party mood, travelling to a distant and remote ground at the far end of the metropolitan area. Many cheer squad members would not have gone to the ground before. It was the sort of the ground then, like West Ham United’s Upton Park or Portsmouth’s Fratton Park in the 1970s and 1980s, that you might avoid going to unless you had a large group and were in self-confident mood.
No part of Bassendean Oval is seemingly reserved for the away supporters (except perhaps the Bill Walker Stand which is located to the immediate right of the McDonald Stand when viewed from inside the playing arena). The McDonald Stand is only 20- or 30-metres from the southern-end goals. The northern-end goals are furthest from the train station so, logically, that was not the place for the away fans. The logic of the era was that visiting cheer squads would stay near the entrance that was closest to the train station so that meant the southern-end at Claremont Oval and the southern-end at Perth Oval. It is like when invited to someone’s home you stay in the visitor’s couch in the living-room and don’t go to the bedrooms! Lathlain Park was and is different because the main entrance affords easy access to both goals. However, since Nick’s Perth FC cheer squad had claimed the northern- or city-end goals at Lathlain Park, away team cheer squads in the mid-1980s would sit at the southern-end goals out of respect. I argue that, although fraternal camaraderie was the norm among cheer squads throughout Australia, based on the Victorian model, there was still an “illusion of violence” since, if the rules of protocol or politeness were not followed by everyone, the mood could turn ugly and many cheer squad members were from working-class or lumpenproletariat backgrounds.
I can recall our West Perth group this day entering what were then the most popular gates of the oval, in the south-west corner closest to Success Hill train station, with the giant flags. In the environment of Bassendean Oval, these flags stood out like a sore thumb. Swans’ fans then had a dour and austere culture where you would not wear club colours. Anything slightly showy was frowned upon as not befitting this working-class district far removed from the city-centre. Furthermore, Swans’ colours are black-and-white; the cheer squad’s red-and-blue jerseys and flags stood out like the first year of colour television. People probably thought that we were show-offs and smart-arses. We took the path of least resistance and set ourselves up behind the southern-end goals. The group’s flags and banners were right there in front of the line of sight of the McDonald Stand’s inhabitants around 25-metres away. The heritage-protected ground is largely unchanged today. One picture on the WAFL Golden Era website shows the McDonald Stand as viewed from the southern-end goals while another picture shows the opposite view (the southern-end goals as viewed from the McDonald Stand) (date of pictures: 12 July 2011).
The cheer squad was chanting its usual chants that day but with perhaps unusual venom. There had been animosity between West Perth supporters and Swan Districts’ coach John Todd since Todd left West Perth’s Brian Adamson out of a Western Australian combined state team in 1975. This animosity had then followed Todd across from East Fremantle to Swan Districts. Dawson writes as follows about the relationship between Swans and West Perth during the 1980s: “The feud was always publicly denied, but continued into the 1980s and all Swans-West Perth games were well-attended with many fiery incidents, off and on the field”. Swans’ record home ground attendance remains today the 22,350 people who watched Swans play West Perth on 10 May 1980 (Round 6).
It may have been the “Ronnie Boucher walks on water / everybody knows that bullshit floats” chant that made the Swan Districts’ fans increasingly upset on this particular day in 1985. (Ronnie Boucher was Swan Districts’ strong aggressive ruckman of the era.) Swan Districts had no recognized or organized cheer squad then but generally cheer squads accept each other’s chants as just part of the job description and not to be taken seriously. I doubt very much whether the West Perth cheer squad would have been offended by, for example, the Perth cheer squad’s chants. Much more dangerous than opposing cheer squads are the disorganized fans. The McDonald Stand was an intimidating place in that era and our cheer squad was insulting Swans’ players and showing off its vibrant red-and-blue colours directly in front of their noses. The cheer squad also had its famous song, sung to the tune of the classic children’s song “Old McDonald had a Farm”: “Old McDonald had a stand/ eyie eyie oh / and in that stand was full of pigs / eyie eyie oh”. Of course the cheer squad members all thought this song was very funny and we sang it repeatedly and at maximum volume. It may have been inherited from Fat Pam’s cheer squad. If not then I do not know who actually coined it.
Around three-quarter time during the main game, we saw that a group of around eight Aboriginal youths, around the group members’ ages or slightly older, had very quietly surrounded us and taken up strategic seating positions just outside the group on all three sides. This Aboriginal group began to make intimidating comments including that they would beat our group members up after the game. The Aboriginal group members wore no club colours but they were very clearly Swans’ supporters. They must have been offended by the West Perth flags and chanting. Our West Perth cheer squad watched the game much more diligently and stopped playing up to and taunting the inhabitants of the McDonald Stand. I could tell that our group members were apprehensive. Aboriginal gang culture and the culture of the suburbs around Bassendean Oval were not well known to any of the group. None of us had any reputation in the area that we could call upon whereas people like Thommo, Courtney, and Robbie were widely known and liked in large swathes of the northern suburbs and P.A. was the King of Balga. It was the classic away fans scenario.
We all began to watch the game much more diligently and talk among ourselves; we adopted a much lower profile. We became just normal fans rather than a cheer squad as such. Even the noisiest members became quiet which was very remarkable. People became grossly absorbed in the match, looked straight ahead, and quietly conversed in their twos and threes. This was partly a strategic act and partly a sub-conscious switch to the self-preservation mode. The chanting mostly stopped although I am sure that we still waved the flags after West Perth goals. One had to literally fly the flag. If we want some theorization of the cheer squad’s behaviour self-modification, we might cite Peter Marsh who writes in Aggro: the Illusion of Violence that:
“[w]e can instantly recognize dominant or submissive stances in other people and we frequently employ them ourselves ... Adopting a submissive posture is the clearest way in which ... a person ... can signal that he has had enough and thus avoid serious injury”.
When the game ended, or possibly five or ten minutes prior to that, the West Perth Cheer Squad looked around and they saw that the Aboriginal group had disappeared. I do not think that anyone even saw or heard them leave. Our West Perth group had passed some kind of test. Possibly the Swan Districts’ group had decided that we were “good guys at heart” or possibly they had just lost interest in confrontation or had somewhere to go straight after the match. Swans’ on-field victory that day might possibly have been seen by the Aboriginal group as having been vindication enough for them (as Mike B. today claims ).
Like the London Teddy Boys who menacingly surrounded Desmond Morris and his wife in a Camden Town cafe in 1957 but then paid the couple’s bill and left with a friendly greeting , the Swan Districts group had reinforced territorial dominance by Swans’ fans over Bassendean Oval, including the seats behind the southern-end goals, without resorting to actual violence. Marsh explains further as follows: “When men enter into aggressive confrontations with each other, the object of the exercise is not killing but preservation of dominance relations, the defence of particular space or access to basic resources”.
The Swan Districts versus West Perth match was probably either the 19.14 (128) to 15.12 (102) Swans’ victory on 8 April 1985 (attendance 10,500) or the 22.12 (144) to 21.16 (142) Swans’ victory on 20 July 1985 (attendance 9,462). It was probably the first one of these as I remember that interest and atmosphere had drained out of the match prior to the last 10 or 15 minutes. One interesting fact is that West Perth defeated Swans five times out of nine during Swans’ premiership years of 1982-84. By contrast, in 1985, when Swans were not among the top two teams and West Perth made the finals series, Swans defeated West Perth three times out of three in the regular season games and one more time in the first semi-final. It is certainly hard to explain this. Such are the vagaries of football.
This event at Bassendean Oval’s southern-end goals was a near-miss for the West Perth cheer squad and the group members probably learned a lesson to be somewhat less cocky, more respectful, and more circumspect in hostile away territory. It must be pointed out that the cheer squad members never viewed this encounter as any sort of “racial war” – our group was multicultural and had a multicultural ethos. For example, D.S. from Tuart Hill was an ethnic Chinese and the brothers Tony and Mario were of Italian ethnicity. In fact West Perth supporters have long been referred to by the racist tag of “Garlic Munchers” (especially by East Perth fans). This tag emerged because of the large southern-European support base which was attracted to the club in the immediate post-World War II period.
West Perth versus Swan Districts, Leederville Oval, Round 14 (7 July) 1984
On another occasion, this time at Leederville Oval in 1984, the West Perth Cheer Squad incurred the wrath of Swan Districts’ ruckman Ron Boucher. No opposition player ever reacted to the cheer squad or responded to it, other than Boucher, in those years from 1984-86. The West Perth Cheer Squad felt that Boucher was an unpleasant character. He was out-of-place in the great Swans’ teams of the early-1980s as he resembled a country footballer from thirty years previously. The Full Points Footy website writes about Ron Boucher as follows although other sources confirm that Boucher did play on into the 1984 season although he missed the losing grand final side:
“Recruited from North Albany, Ron Boucher made his league debut with Swan Districts in 1971. Extremely powerfully built at 192cm and 102kg, he used his strength to awesome effect, most notably during Swans’ halcyon period under John Todd in the early 1980s. He was one of his team’s best in the losing grand final against South Fremantle in 1980, and was a key contributor to premiership wins in 1982-3, despite having to battle for much of the time with persistent niggling injuries. He was equally effective as a knock ruckman or a strong marking forward, and was selected in a forward pocket in Swan Districts’ official ‘Team of the Century’.
Ron Boucher played 190 games for Swan Districts between 1971 and 1983 [sic], as well as representing Western Australia. He won the club’s fairest and best award in his penultimate season”.
The West Perth Cheer Squad had a reverse (uncomplimentary) version of its “walks on water” chant reserved for opposition players as follows: “Ronnie Boucher walks on water / everybody knows that bullshit floats”. P.A., Mike C., Pete C., and Thommo especially thought that this chant was just hilarious. There was also an alternative, negative chant variant “Ronnie Boucher woo-hoo” and at the last syllable people would raise their right arms to around face height and then move their open right hands in downwards motion in front of their raised, stiff wrists. I am certain that readers will be aware of the particular hand gesture which is being referred to here. As an ex-West Perth player and one the club should really have held on to the late Chris Stasinowsky also received this treatment from the cheer squad when he played for Perth in 1985 and 1986.
Mike B. recounted to me one 1984 Leederville Oval incident involving Boucher which had failed to rise to the top of my memory and which had not appeared in the first draft of this book. This is a fiery incident relating to West Perth versus Swans matches in the 1980s which has not previously been made public. According to Mike B. , on this day at Leederville, Boucher became upset by our cheer squad’s chants and he walked up to where Mike B. and I were seated, leaned forward over the boundary fence, grabbed Mike B. by his West Perth replica jersey, and demanded to know: “What did you f***ing say?” In deep shock, Mike B. managed to stammer: “I’m really sorry, Mr. Boucher”. In an interesting postscript to this story, Mike B. mentioned that years after this Leederville Oval incident he contested an arm-wrestling bout against Boucher in Broome which was the town where Boucher was then living. To no-one’s surprise Boucher ultimately beat all other contestants and won the contest.
South Fremantle Football Club
There is one last chant of our West Perth Cheer Squad which I have not discussed. This chant is probably the most controversial used by the cheer squad and so it should be left to last. If you ask me now which actions, if any, I regret I would answer “this chant in particular”. As mentioned, South Fremantle had a contingent of brilliant Aboriginal players in the early-1980s and West Perth had two great Aboriginal players in Derek Kickett and Ron Davis. Another Aboriginal player with great talent and flair was half-forward Lindsay Henry who played five games for West Perth in the 1988 season. One of South Fremantle’s greats was wingman Benny Vigona, a member of the 1980 premiership side and the 1979 and 1981 losing grand final teams. Vigona polled seven votes in the 1984 Sandover Medal Count, half as many as scored by the equal fourth-place getters Laurie Keene (Subiaco) and Peter Menaglio (West Perth). The Full Points Footy website writes as follows about the great Benny Vigona:
“After commencing his senior career with St Marys, where he won back to back best and fairest awards, Benny Vigona moved to South Fremantle in 1977 and rapidly developed into one of the WANFL competition’s most exciting talents. Initially used mainly either on a wing or at half forward, he boasted sublime ball skills, explosive pace, and a penchant for the spectacular. Later in his career he was shifted to a half back flank with considerable success, reinforcing his undoubted ability with a newfound consistency in the process. In a decade with South, Vigona amassed close to 200 league games and represented Western Australia on 4 occasions”.
The West Perth Cheer Squad had a chant of “Benny’s got a Vigona!” Obviously the chant was only used at games against South Fremantle. I do not know the origin of this chant but everyone thought that it was funny. It may have come from Fat Pam’s cheer squad, Grandstand Falcons or some other group of West Perth support. Fortunately, there is little chance that Benny himself heard the chant as he was a midfielder and the cheer squad always sat behind the goals. Marsh provides some theoretical commentary regarding the need to “feminize” one’s opponents as a part of “aggro” and “the illusion of violence”:
“The examination of the football [hooligan] aggro phenomenon revealed a very important process. It showed that in the context of the striving for manly dominance a highly strategic weapon was the system of insults which served to demasculinize one’s rivals. Making them appear homosexual or, better still, feminine was part and parcel of this particular manifestation of aggro”.
Was this a racist chant? It certainly represents a deliberate attempt to “feminize” a rival star Aboriginal player. The chant opportunistically takes advantage of a surname that obviously can be used quite easily as the principal ingredient for toilet humour. I do not personally think that it was a racist chant as if a white footballer had happened to have had a similar sounding surname then the chant would still have been used. Although this is subjective I can recall no animosity around the use of the chant in terms of tone or accompanying chit-chat – the chant was just a form of comic relief. There was much more venom involved in chants about Swan Districts and that club’s players such as Ronnie Boucher. South Fremantle was not a major rival of West Perth in the 1980s. Nonetheless, it is a chant that I definitely regret. Aboriginal players do not need to bear any additional burdens or stresses whilst on the playing field. It is easy to excuse the chant by saying that these were less politically correct times but, then again, I have already discussed my dislike of the unambiguously racist “Garlic Munchers” tag as applied to West Perth supporters by East Perth fans.
Interestingly, Atkinson documents that, in February 2004, a group of West Perth members began calling themselves the “Garlic Munchers” to differentiate themselves from other members in terms of their views about the adoption of “Joondalup Falcons” as the club’s trading name. This is a similar situation to those Greek-Australians who voluntarily adopted the “wog” tag in the popular early-1990s stage-show Wogs Out of Work (created by Nick Giannopoulos and Simon Palomares) or those African-Americans who have voluntarily used the word “nigger” in relation to themselves. This behaviour can be seen as altering power relations by turning the abusive word into a term of endearment or even empowerment when used by a certain group of people in certain ways and at certain times of their own choosing. It is a very political act as it takes over the discursive space and provides new opportunities for the fight against racism whilst also being used to further group cohesion and self-identity. The barrier between “insiders” and “outsiders” is retained but it is now turned into something positive and powerful from the viewpoint of the group using the stigmatized name.
First semi-final 1985 – West Perth versus Swan Districts, Subiaco Oval, 31 August
West Perth earned a rematch against Swan Districts in the 1985 first semi-final played on 31 August 1985 at Subiaco Oval. In those days there was a grassed northern bank at the city-end and there was concrete terracing all along the Roberts Road or eastern side of the ground. These were the general admission ticket areas back then. In that era, for every final apart from the grand-final, there was no need to pre-book tickets at Subiaco Oval unless you wanted grandstand seating. In those days semi-finals would attract between 20,000 and 35,000 people and the oval itself could accommodate close to 50,000. Nowadays grand-finals struggle to attract even the type of crowds that semi-finals attracted in the WAFL’s Golden Era.
In the newspapers leading up to the game the media columnists were split fairly evenly in terms of which team they thought would win the game. Swan Districts’ Garry Sidebottom was widely and correctly perceived to be the wild-card who, on a good day, could single-handedly destroy West Perth up forward which is exactly what happened. West Perth also suffered from Menaglio being out injured ; Duckworth not having recovered from an absence caused by the after-effects of swallowing a fish bone ; and, although Comerford, Fong, and Michalczyk did play, they were well below their bests as a result of carrying niggling injuries into the game from the qualifying rounds . Swans’ tough centreman Tony Solin had also been expected to miss the game on the Monday of the lead-up week but he returned to play a very strong game. Rogers and the veteran Murnane missed the last qualifying game versus a lacklustre Claremont, but Murnane was expected to return for the semi-final and be able to slot in well to replace the injured Menaglio. As it turned out Murnane did play but he was not listed in any commentator’s best-players list. Meanwhile, Rogers’ match statistics of one mark, zero kicks, and two effective handballs suggest that he was still incapacitated.
On first semi-final day, 1985, Mike B. and I took an early morning bus from Booragoon to the city-centre and then the train to West Leederville station. The West Perth Cheer Squad had arranged to meet at the Subiaco Road entrance gates, in the north-east corner of the ground, rather than at the more crowded Roberts Road gates in the south-east corner. Group members had planned beforehand to get tickets on the day and to be first in the gates when they opened which must have been fixed at about 8am or 9am. The cheer squad members needed to be early to claim a seat immediately behind the fence on the two rows of wooden seats in front of the grassed bank. Mike C. and Pete C. were ahead of Mike B. and me in line when we arrived. Mike and Pete were carrying their red-and-blue flags and wearing their long-sleeve West Perth replica jerseys. I can’t recall if they already had their tickets and were waiting for Mike B. and me outside the line or whether they were simply there already ahead of us in the queue. We all obtained our general admission tickets quickly and we (others may have been there too by then) were near the front of the waiting crowd when the gates opened.
The general admission tickets entitled you access to the grassed northern bank and to the concrete terracing but not to the grandstands. As was the practice in that era, our cheer squad members sprinted up and then down the grassed bank when the gates opened and claimed a section of seats directly behind the fence, sufficient to accommodate the core 15 people we were expecting for the game. The early arrivals claimed around eight spots on each of the first two wooden seat rows as had been agreed by everyone the week before at the final home-and-away game. The cheer squad sat in the north-east corner of the ground, directly behind the fence, in around the same place as Perth supporters placed a “Chris Mitsopoulos” fence banner during the 1977 grand final.
Cheer squad members settled down to a long day of watching the early colts and reserves games which, coincidentally, all involved West Perth. The regular core group members all arrived, one by one and in twos and threes, and were offered seats in the group’s new “reserved” section. The crowd in the grassed banked area built up steadily throughout the day. By starting time for the main game most people seated on the grassed bank had given way to people standing up. In that era the bars and the food stands were located right at the top of the grassed bank at the city-end. No group member drank beer at games which, in hindsight, is somewhat surprising as several people were 18-years-old by August 1985 (see Appendix A).
Cheer squad members planned to enjoy the day; again there was a carnival atmosphere, but the group had been metaphorically sobered up by the recent encounter with the Swan Districts’ fans at Bassendean Oval so people were careful to avoid trouble. It was always uncertain which team the bulk of the crowd nearest you would support at finals games and, if you arrived at the ground very early, you might later find yourself surrounded by opposition supporters. Therefore, it was wiser to restrain your behaviour before the start of the main game.
We had all had previous experiences of West Perth losing final round matches. The team had entered the final four, but not made the grand-final, in 1976, 1977, and 1978, and again in 1982 in Dennis Cometti’s first year of coaching. Group members were mostly too young to have properly experienced the 1975 premiership win; on this day in 1985 the core group, excluding Ben, Rob, Tony, Half, Mario, and Thommo Junior, ranged in age from 15 to 19 so in 1975 this core group would have been aged from five to nine. Group members had learned not to have high hopes of West Perth come finals’ time. To be honest people all expected a loss but we would have loved a win. In the end West Perth was duly defeated by Swan Districts in the first semi-final of 1985, 24.14 (158) to 19.12 (126) in front of an official attendance of 26,508 people. The team had not been humiliated but I do remember clearly that the result was never in serious doubt this day. The result did not surprise the cheer squad members as all of us were West Perth fans of the drought era (to use Brian Atkinson’s term)!
Garry Sidebottom was unbeatable with his nine goals, the equal record highest score by any footballer in a WAFL final round match. Dawson writes that: “[Swans’ rover Barry] Kimberley played the kick behind the play role to perfection when West Perth had the breeze, ensuring Swans path to the preliminary final” . West Perth’s losing score of 19 goals was commendable and, according to Atkinson, on most days would have been good enough to win the game.
A look at the scoring records suggest that West Perth in 1985 suffered from the lack of a regular full-forward with the club’s on-ball and half-forward-line running players bobbing up to kick much of the team’s scores. Mark Stephens (27 games, 1982, 1984-86 ) was named in The West Australian newspaper to play full-forward in the first semi-final but he kicked no goals or points and may not even have played. Top scorers for the day for West Perth were centre-half-forward Phil Bradmore with 4.1 and Derek Kickett with 4.1. Running players were the only other West Perth men to kick more than one goal with the remaining multiple goal scorers being Darren Bewick 3.1, Corry Bewick 2.2, Les Fong 2.2, and Peter Murnane 2.0. Incredibly no recognized full-forward was recruited by West Perth for the 1986 season and West Perth fans had to endure the ignominy of watching West Perth reject Mick Rea perform splendidly for Perth in both 1985 and 1986 playing as a conventional lead-mark-kick full-forward. On first semi-final day 1985, the presence of full-forward Sidebottom and Swans’ mental toughness honed by years of successful finals’ campaigns were clearly the two main differences between the teams.
In the end, Swan Districts failed to progress further beyond the preliminary final in 1985, and Ron Alexander’s East Fremantle defeated Haydn Bunton Junior’s Subiaco by a mere five points in the grand-final. I watched the grand-final not with the cheer squad but with my father and grandfather seated in the middle-tier of the three-tier grandstand at the western-end of Subiaco Oval (following a family tradition rather than a cheer squad tradition this time around). I can remember walking back to our car after the game, heading back into Subiaco proper, and we stopped a few times to let my grandfather take short rests sitting on little brick walls and similar. After West Perth had been eliminated, we all understood that the cheer squad’s duties and commitments were over for the year.
West Perth Football Club (continued)
Ironically, to pour salt into the wounds, West Perth defeated eventual premiers East Fremantle two out of three times in the 1985 home-and-away rounds. None of the cheer squad members would have regarded East Fremantle as clear favourites had West Perth gone on to encounter the Sharks in the 1985 grand final. West Perth probably had the Moss Street-based club’s measure. Football is made up of vagaries, trivia, and ironies such as this. In fact, from 1976-86, the pre-West Coast Eagles part of the drought era, West Perth generally had a strong record against the eventual premiers. Most West Perth supporters believed that the team could beat anyone on its day, throughout the drought era, with the possible exception of the 1979 season. However, from 1976 through to 1985, West Perth was always choked or outplayed or outmuscled in those final round matches it did manage to play in. It might have been a nerves problem and /or a matter of self-belief. West Perth was up against highly professional and disciplined teams coached by legendary and expert WAFL coaches including Ken Armstrong (Perth); Mal Brown (South Fremantle and Perth); Haydn Bunton Junior (Subiaco); and John Todd (Swan Districts).
Those hardcore West Perth supporters of the drought era were not foolish enough to fail to see a pattern at work. The team clearly ran on enthusiasm, confidence, emotion, and passion during those years. Whereas most other clubs started slowly under a new coach only to reach first the finals, then to lose a grand final, and then finally to win one, West Perth peaked in the first year of a new coach and then the trend was downhill until the next new coach was brought in! As examples of the normal course of events at other clubs, Perth lost in 1974 but won in 1976 and 1977; East Perth lost in 1976 but won in 1978; South Fremantle lost in 1979 but won in 1980; Swans lost in 1980 only to win in 1982, 1983, and 1984; East Fremantle lost in 1977 but won in 1979 and later lost in 1984 but won in 1985; whilst Subiaco lost in 1985 but won in 1986. Later on VFL/AFL club West Coast, famously, lost in 1991 but won in 1992 and 1994. The principle even applied to pre-drought West Perth when it lost in 1973 but won in 1975. It was certainly true, in that era, that “you had to lose a grand final before you could win one” and this adage became wise advice in Western Australia not only for football but for life in general. Dawson also, referencing this period in WAFL history, refers to what he terms “an old football adage”, i.e. “you must lose one to understand what is needed to win one”.
However, departing from the normal pattern at the other WAFL clubs, West Perth won in 1975 in Graham Campbell’s first year; reached the finals in 1982 in Dennis Cometti’s first year; and reached the finals again in John Wynne’s first year in 1985. However, West Perth failed to make the finals in Cometti’s second and third years (1983 and 1984); and again in Wynne’s second year (1986). Even in the immediate post-West Coast era the club made the finals under George Michalczyk in his first season in 1989 only to be wooden-spooners for his next two seasons. The theory that this constituted a unique West Perth pattern was a fairly convincing one although, in all of the years, there were a host of other factors that no doubt could also be used to explain the various rises and falls. It seems that the West Perth playing group became enthusiastic under a new coach but then became bored and lackadaisical by the coach’s second year. It didn’t seem to be a very mature response to the outside observer.
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