West Coast Eagles - History

History

The West Coast Eagles were selected in 1986 as one of two expansion teams to enter the Victorian Football League (VFL) the following season, along with the Brisbane Bears. Ron Alexander was appointed as the team's inaugural coach in September 1986, with the inaugural squad, comprising a majority of players from the West Australian Football League (WAFL), unveiled in late October. Ross Glendinning, recruited from North Melbourne, was made the club's first captain as one of the few players with previous VFL experience. The team's first senior match in the VFL was played against Richmond at Subiaco Oval in late March 1987, with West Coast defeating Richmond by 14 points. Having won eleven games and lost eleven games for the season, the club finished eighth out of fourteen teams. At the end of the season, John Todd, the coach of Swan Districts in the WAFL, replaced Alexander as West Coast's coach. The club made the finals for the first time in 1988, but lost form the following season, winning only seven games to finish 11th on the ladder. Todd was sacked at the end of the 1989 season, and was replaced by Michael Malthouse, who had previously coached Footscray. With the competition having rebranded itself as the Australian Football League (AFL) at the start of the 1990 season, West Coast finished third on the ladder at the conclusion of the home-and-away season, and progressed to the preliminary final before losing to Essendon, having been forced to play four consecutive finals in Melbourne.

John Worsfold replaced Steve Malaxos as captain for the 1991 season, and the club finished the season as minor premiers for the first time, losing only three games. In the finals series, West Coast progressed to the grand final, but were defeated by Hawthorn by 53 points. Peter Sumich kicking 111 goals during the season, becoming the West Coast player to reach a century of goals, as well as the first-ever left-footer. In 1992, West Coast finished fourth on the ladder, but again progressed to the grand final, defeating Geelong by 28 points to become the first team based outside Victoria to win a premiership. Having slipped to third in 1993, the club finished as minor premiers the following season, and went on to again defeat Geelong in the grand final to win its second premiership in three years. In 1995, a second AFL team based in Western Australia, the Fremantle Football Club, with the two clubs' subsequent rivalry branded as the "Western Derby". West Coast made the finals in every year that remained in the 1990s, but failed to reach another grand final, with a fourth-place finish in 1995 their best result. Worsfold retired at the end of the 1998 season, and was replaced by his vice-captain, Guy McKenna, who served as captain until his retirement two seasons later.

Malthouse left West Coast at the end of the 1999 season to take up the senior coaching position with Collingwood, and was replaced by Ken Judge, who had been coach of Hawthorn. The 2000 and 2001 seasons were marked by a rapid decrease in form after the loss of several key senior players, culminating in a 14th-place in 2001, at the time the worst in the club's history. Round eighteen of the 2000 season marked the club's final match at the WACA Ground, which had been used concurrently with Subiaco Oval since the club's inception. Judge was sacked at the end of 2001, and replaced by the club's former captain John Worsfold, who had been serving as assistant coach at Carlton. The club made the finals in 2002, 2003, and 2004, but each time failed to progress past the elimination final. Ben Cousins was made sole captain of the club in 2002, having shared the role with Dean Kemp the previous season. During this time, the team was boosted by a number of high picks in the AFL Draft gained as a result of the previous poor finishes. Chris Judd, who had been taken with pick three in the 2001 National Draft, won the Brownlow Medal as the best player in the competition in 2004, becoming the first West Coast player to win the award. In 2005, the Eagles finished second on the ladder after the regular season, and progressed to the grand final against Sydney, where they were defeated by four points. For the second consecutive year, the Brownlow Medal was won by an Eagles player, with Ben Cousins and Daniel Kerr finishing first and second, respectively. West Coast finished as minor premiers for a third time in 2006, with seventeen wins from 22 games. In the 2006 finals series, the club lost the qualifying final to Sydney by one point, but after defeating the Western Bulldogs and the Adelaide in the semi- and preliminary final, respectively, again progressed to the grand final, where the Eagles defeated Sydney by a point in an exact reversal of the score in the qualifying final. The two grand finals in 2005 and 2006 were part of a series of close games between the two clubs that resulted in a total difference of thirteen points across six games, an AFL record.

The club finished third during the regular 2007 season, but after a series of late-season injuries lost both its games during the final series. During the past few seasons, the club had been impacted by a series of highly-publicised off-field controversies involving allegations of recreational drug use, nightclub assaults, and links to outlawed motorcycle gangs. Michael Gardiner was traded after crashing his car while drunk, and Ben Cousins resigned the captaincy of the club prior to the 2006 season after being charged with evading a police breath-test, with Chris Judd taking over as captain. Cousins was sacked at the end of the 2007 season after being arrested for possession of drugs, while Judd requested to be traded back to Victoria, and was traded to Carlton in exchange for a key forward, Josh Kennedy, and several draft picks. Darren Glass, the club's full-back since the retirement of Ashley McIntosh in 2003, was then appointed captain. These controversies were followed by a series of poor seasons on-field, culminating in the club's first wooden spoon, after winning only four games in 2010. The three-year period between 2008 and 2010 was the longest time in the club's history without a finals appearance. Despite predictions of another bottom-four finish in 2011, West Coast won 16 games to finish in the top four, becoming the first team since the Brisbane Lions in 1998 and 1999 to reach a preliminary final after finishing last the previous season.