With just seven rounds remaining, the West Coast Eagles might be about the only team in the top four not scared of heights. On Saturday night, the reigning premiers took an eight-game winning streak over Fremantle into the 50th Western Derby and parlayed it into a brutal 15-goal beating.
Although the margin was 26 points off the biggest derby win nearly 20 years ago, the Eagles held Fremantle to a humiliating 2.19 and boosted their own percentage by 7.9%. But more convincing than the numbers are the names – specifically, four names – not on the 2018 grand final team sheet.
Last year, Brad Sheppard’s hamstring ended his season and cost him a premiership medal. The backman is one of the Eagles most reliable big game performers. In 2015 he was the Eagles best player during the finals, and one of the few who performed in that year’s grand final loss to Hawthorn. On Saturday night he was named the Glendinning-Allan medallist after collecting 25 possessions, seven marks, and 11 rebound 50s. He is an important piece of a brilliant backline that held the Dockers to a couple of goals for 60 inside 50s.
In the middle of the ground, Andrew Gaff (who missed last year’s grand final for the same reason he was booed every time he went near the ball on the weekend) led the West Coast midfield with 34 possessions. Up forward, Jarrod Cameron (brother of Brisbane’s Charlie) kicked four goals in just his third game and provided the Eagles with another dangerous forward option. The Eagles already own perhaps the game’s best forward one-two punch in Josh Kennedy (a late withdrawal) and Jack Darling (four goals on Saturday) with the game’s best collection of small forwards including Willie Rioli, Liam Ryan and Jamie Cripps (who also kicked four goals in the derby).
And then there’s Nic Naitanui, who provides the Eagles with what you’d call an X-factor, were his ability to amaze not so consistent. Watch the first minute of the second quarter. For a man standing at more than two metres tall to bend down, collect the ball cleanly in one-hand in pouring rain, fend off two opponents and get a handball out to Cameron to kick the goal is nothing short of an unfair advantage.
“There’s mental scarring when you do two [ACLs]. It’s a credit to Nic he can let himself go… he’s on the most combative position on the ground and probably the best at it,” said Simpson, just cracking the veneer of what Naitanui brings to these Eagles. This is particularly evident at the centre bounces and amplified by this season’s 6-6-6 rule. In just his second game back for the year, Naitanui was the initiator for West Coast’s four goals kicked from restarts on Saturday night and was one of the reasons why the Eagles, without their best forward on Saturday night and in pouring rain, still managed to kick 19.8.
Meanwhile, at Marvel Stadium under a closed roof, the hitherto premiership favourites Geelong kicked their lowest score since being embarrassed by Melbourne in last year’s elimination final. Worse still, they were run off their feet in giving up a three-quarter-time lead to the revitalised Western Bulldogs.
Bulldog coach and 2017 secular saint, Luke Beveridge, has declared his side could “win most” of their remaining games, and with Marcus Bontempelli, Jackson Macrae and Lachie Hunter in full flight – alongside Aaron Naughton, one of the most exciting young forwards in the competition – you’d be hesitant to doubt him.
The Dogs now join a glut of teams in the middle of the ladder, including a red-hot North Melbourne and a hot-again Port Adelaide, who despite losing Travis Boak in the warm-up with a back spasm, smashed an Adelaide side that right now appears to aspire to middling.
On middling, the glut of teams battling for spots outside the top four could soon be joined by a Collingwood outfit whose coach still can’t quite figure out what the hell is wrong or, not unrelated, how Will Hoskin-Elliott dropped an uncontested chest mark running into an open goal, before booting the ball out on the full.
On Friday night, the Pies lost to a hurts-to-watch Hawthorn coming off a four-match losing streak and a goal from a kid who has spent the past month in the VFL.
“It’s inexplicable, to be honest,” said Nathan Buckley, who this week has also had to endure another Michael Malthouse revenge tour playing out on the front pages of Melbourne’s tabloid press and supported by a podcast. Malthouse’s gratification for a protracted, bitter-end vendetta that rages for years, now only rivals Richard Nixon.
It’s the last thing Buckley needs as he prepares to fly to Perth to face the Pies’ recurring West Coast nightmare on Friday night. To paraphrase Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas, Buckley’s not one to be scared of heights, but he might just be afraid of falling.
