BIG THINGS IN UNAPPEALING PACKAGES
59 out of 100.
That’s what SEN gave this fixture in terms of watchability.
59.
It’s a score that makes even my Home Economics grades seem like lofty skyscrapers. But on the face of it, there was logic behind the dud grade – the Eagles have been almost totally useless for the lifespan of some domestic pets, while the Giants have served as a combination football club and hospital ward since February. They arrived in WA as slight favourites despite their best key back having spent a dangerous amount of time playing for Essendon, as Taylor and Buckley remain unavailable. Hell, even among us at The Mongrel Punt, this game sat rotting on the shelf, the Picnic bar in the box of Favourites, until I bravely took one for the team and in doing so, accidentally covered the best match of the weekend. Mainly because Swans-Pies happened on Friday, which isn’t a part of the weekend, I will not be taking questions.
I was rewarded early for my bravery with the openings of a goalfest. Three minutes in, Toby Bedford had two majors, Waterman was looking imperious, and the speed of the game was blistering. I settled in and waited for a classic shootout. Then, the football gods remembered who exactly was playing, and snapped to their senses.
OH WAIT, THIS IS WHY NO ONE WANTED THIS GAME
The period from the six minute mark of the first term and about ten minutes from half time was some of the worst football I’ve witnessed this year, and I’ve covered multiple Essendon games. The Giants played like they had air-cooled brains, constantly sprinting around like the old headless chicken cliche, and their ball delivery paid the price. There was no problem for the Giants in the first half that couldn’t be solved by either running at it, or delivering a dump kick into the forward line with as much care and precision as a DoorDasher at the end of an 18-hour shift. The xScore nerds among us cringed as big Max [insert correct spelling of his surname here] tried to kick 55 metre goals with a 40 metre boot, and the hotspot became a sore spot laying unused. The Giants kicked two goals from their first ten shots, and it’s all because none of them were quality opportunities.
This is a credit to the Eagles’ pressure, a credit I must swiftly take away as they too were completely inept with ball in hand, if indeed they could pick the damned thing up. I’m not sure what monster truck rally or grass-watering contest has been happening at Optus this week but the surface was a slipperier prospect than making a joke about the Israel-Iran conflict, and clean possession was at a premium.
The Eagles accounted for this by removing any and all pace from most of their early ball movement which worked, yes, but reminded me far too much of a) watching my Crows, and b) the industrial quantities of alcohol required for me to sit through watching my Crows. This mix of stodgy ball movement and hectic chaos saw four goals scored in the first 45 or so minutes, a scoreline that if the genders were swapped would see men with cars as their Facebook profile pictures dig up jokes from the 1950s. I personally put the game on in the background whilst doing more interesting things with my day and found much more excitement in washing the dishes, grouting the bathroom and hacking off my extremities with power tools.
Things, however, were about to change.
REID ALL ABOUT IT
With the Giants’ attacking moves still being as fumbling, clumsy and lasting as long as me in the boudoir, the game was screaming for a hero.
It got it.
After a somewhat quiet first term, newspaper headline writers across Perth felt nervous waves of pleasure as Harley Reid turned it, and indeed them, on. In a match with no real scoring and few ball-gatherers, Reid scored two goals in a matter of minutes and got 14 touches for the term. This turned the tide, or the Tsunami as it were, and all of the Giants pressure from the first term almost completely evaporated. In his typical flying-under-a-rader-he-really-should-have-lit-up-by-this-stage manner, Tim Kelly also racked up ten and the two had four centre clearances combined as the Eagles completely dominated the midfield. The lesser names picked up on the momentum – Hutchinson in particular having great moments, and the Eagles stormed into half time with their name very much on this one.
And the crazy thing is the Eagles were still doing this despite not really moving the ball with much more intensity outside of their blitzing centre clearances. Still more than happy to take their time finding opportunities, as compared to the raging style of the Giants that really was in need of a Ritalin at times – Lawrence…sorry, Ryan Angwin demonstrating this by clobbering Harley Reid after forcing him to miss, giving the best player for the opposition another go at it which Harley converted.
Actually, scrap that, as when they did pull it back, it also resulted in Eagles chances – Joe Fonti delivered a suicide ball to Clayton Oliver who didn’t want to join two of his Premiership teammate midfielders in racking up notable injuries. He stood back and allowed something called a Hamish Davis to win a contest that led to a goal, which felt like if Socrates instead poisoned himself by drinking that Panera lemonade that kills you. I realise that’s a two-year-old reference but to be fair, it’s from the last time the Giants seemed to be any good.
A BIG BIG WAKEUP CALL
The Giants seemed to take serious offence to me writing these very offensive notes (the ones you’re reading have been sanitised), and took to actually being a competent football team for ten minutes. It was a nice and not unwelcome sight – I’m a paid-up Giants member and have been for the last four years, and no, this isn’t a joke. The free-flowing Giants style, at its peak, was one of the most fun to watch in the league and it’s been absent for far too long. They brought pressure to an Eagles side that seemingly wasn’t expecting its opponent to have any fight whatsoever. Big Magda Szubanski up front provided what the Giants had been missing all day, an actual lead up target to kick to. Surprise, surprise, the strategy that was getting 1980s St Kilda a hundred points a week still helps you score, and Magda scored two quick ones that, in addition to Brent Daniels kicking one of the luckiest goals you’ve ever seen, gave the Giants the lead and momentum that looked unshiftable. By the twelve minute mark, the Giants had scored five goals to one in the quarter.
In the NBA, there’s a metric called plus/minus. It’s staggeringly simple but tells you a lot about player impact. Basically, it measures the point differential of a team when a given player is on the park. If you have a positive number, it means your team is outsourcing the opposition when you’re on the field. If it’s negative, you’re not.
Reuben Ginbey’s plus-minus must be stratospheric because when he was off the field for the start of the third term, the Giants outscored the Eagles by over 20 points. When he came on after a Stringer goal, the Giants scored a mere two behinds for the rest of the term and found scoring difficult in general. The mop-headed, powerfully built youngster threw himself into everything and, along with the experienced head of Elliot Yeo who did the usual Elliot Yeo things (minus getting injured), transformed the Eagles defence and gave them much-needed composure. The Giants seemed to flag late on from the intensity being increased beyond rationality, and shipped a lot of late opportunities to the Eagles, almost surrendering the lead as the final change loomed.
Any momentum the Eagles may have gained early in the fourth was overturned when Milan Murdock, arguing the point on one of many amateurish umpiring calls on the night, earned two consecutive 50 metre penalties in an act that is both virtually unseen since the days of Gehrig and Barry Hall, and that landed the Giants an easy platform to score again. The Giants continued to keep up the pressure from early in the third and things were looking dicey.
WHAT THE RUCK HAPPENED?
It’s time to introduce you to our real hero. The changes to the ruck rules this year have completely upended the apple cart, and shuffled up the hierarchy of rucks. Reilly O’Brien went from ‘handy tap ruckman with the kicking skills of my three-month-old nephew’ to the waterboy for a guy who’d played less to the start of the season than Rhys Unwin. Sean Darcy went from lead ruck to behind Mason Cox in the pecking order. And Keiren Briggs has gone from potentially a top-five ruck in terms of overall player value to near-bankruptcy. He’s been outplayed most of the year but against the not-actually-brothers-Williams, he was presented with an opportunity for an easy positional win.
Instead, Bailey Williams beat his brains out. Yep. Bailey Williams. The player who’s usually so average and run-of-the-mill that you’d order him by the foot if you wanted ‘generic ruckman’. The player who got thirteen hitouts against Fremantle in a full game. The player who you pick up in your fantasy draft league when your real ruckman gets injured. Him.
Bailey Williams played the best game of his life, and although that’s not a huge qualifying statement, it would be true even if he was one of the better sub-prime rucks in the game. He not only got two clearances when the Eagles’ backs were against the wall, but he got the last goal of that third term to stabilise the side. His last term, though, was when he really stood out. Briggs was slow, out on his feet, almost useless at centre throw-ups. Williams got 12 hitouts, three tackles, two more clearances and was involved in three Eagles scoring chains.
After a rather disappointing third term, the Eagles attacked every ball in the final quarter like it was their last. The Giants had lifted their pressure to their third-quarter peak, which was effective. However the Eagles’ pressure was some of the best I’ve ever seen, and provided a contest that harked back to their glory days against the Swans in the 2000s. It was fantastic to watch, and the Eagles showed that they truly deserved to win, if not for some critical skill errors that were preventing them from fully putting the sword to a Giants side that had been intermittent. Honestly, watch this final term, it may not be the best in a season full of great final terms but for pure effort on display it ranks right up there.
Jake Waterman shows how much the Giants missed Buckley and Taylor, by adding seven quick points. Laverde had a spectacular game, par for the course for a player I’ve dumped from my fantasy team in recent weeks, but was running a one-man show.
With only a few minutes left, up steps our hero. Bailey Williams ensured he will add to his solitary career vote when Brownlow night comes around, by ousting Jake Riccardi in an aerial duel and slamming home the sealer.
WHAT IT MEANS TO DESERVE TO WIN
West Coast deserved this victory. Not necessarily because they were the best team, which you could argue was true. To use the old cliche, they seemed to want and indeed need this win a whole lot more than their injury-ravaged opponent, but that’s not the reason either. No. They deserve this win for one number – not the 9 of Harley Reid, not the 40-odd that represents Bailey Williams’ hitouts, not for anything their players did in securing a sensational victory – but the number 47,033.
That’s the average crowd that’s come, week to week, to watch an Eagles side that finished with a single, lonely, pathetic 2025 win and on paper looked even worse rolling into season 2026. These 47,033 people have already experienced a rollercoaster – a win against North that prevented them, by Elo rating, from falling under 1996 Fitzroy, immediately followed by a 128-point Swans belting that isn’t even the biggest they’ve endured this election cycle. An insipid Derby loss was followed by giving a Richmond side made entirely of spare parts their only win of a brutal season.
This side hasn’t been any good, at all, in ages – the last time they got consecutive wins of two goals or more was two years ago, itself breaking a three-year drought. And yet they still turn up, in their thousands, out-attending all but the very biggest clubs in the league, playing in the biggest stadium in the country, if not the entire Southern hemisphere. To say the loyalty of these fans has been undying is an understatement – excluding 2022, attendances have been trending up since COVID.
The Eagles fans have stuck by a loser like no other team has in Australian sports history. Look at Richmond – when they last won a flag, West Coast played their most recent final. In four home games, the Eagles out-drew them by nearly 50,000 people. When West Coast wins, these are the people that are being rewarded, the ones who stick by their team through the very worst runs teams can have. When West Coast wins, no matter how unlikely, no matter how insipid the opponent, no matter if the hero turns out to be Bailey goddamn Williams, humanity wins.
And even though this writer is a Giants member, who’s made an active bet to run a kilometre for every win the Eagles get despite being less fit than the chair he’s sitting on, you’d better believe I’m writing this with the biggest grin on my face.
