The West just posted an article linking us to Suns midfielder Alex Davies, going on to say he's open to playing for us as well.
24 years of age, 192cm, shouldn't be worth a lot.
Thoughts?
Hey everyone,
Just wanted to share a project I've been working on. Blueprint Footy Academy is launching in Perth this October, with an 8-week development program for footballers aged 11–15.
The focus is on skill development, decision-making, game awareness and confidence, with small group coaching and individual feedback throughout the program.
If you've got a young footy player who's keen to improve their game, feel free to check it out or send me a message if you have any questions. 🏉
Can anyone tell me why he isn’t getting games?
Watching starc and Duggan take kick ins is so uncreative, constant long bombs, no 30 meter hit ups which Lindsay can do, he’s also one of if not the best kicks on the team at 19 which is pretty sad to say, he got a rising star nom in round 10 and has some pretty good potential.
So why isn’t he playing?
Watching the tigers blues game, I think it may be ok if Broad wants to come home and we can pick him up cheaply to play a season or 2.
He played under Mini before, he is rich in experience and definitely help our young backs, advice and mentor, stability and ease Ginbey workload next season.
Seems our senior players let us down last night , yeo Graham Baker duggan all not much influence on the game ,would be nice to see macrae, sandy Brock grego given a look in
From 30 points down to winning by 39!
Macrae 30 touches, Hall 28 & 9 i50, Schoenberg 27 & 2 goals, Hewett 25 & 8 tackles, Maric 24, 8 tackles 7 i50 on a wing - good response to being dropped, Johnston 21 & 3 goals.
Solid spread of contributions & guys putting pressure on the AFL side
I've learnt to live with our subpar performances. I've learnt to live with umpires who umpire like they've never seen the sport of AFL played before or decide that they think they need to exert themselves on the game. But working all week, looking forward to watching eagles on a Friday night to have to listen Gerard Healy and Ben Dixon takes the cake. There are so many great WA commentators, surely Fox Footy can open the cheque book out so I don't have to commentate the games myself with the volume down.
Good click bait but still a good signing.
Our first quarters are killing us everygame. Then Mini decides to put one or two behind the play and suddenly the game evens out.
We need to start the game and put someone back immediately to stay competitive past the first quarter. Thoughts
Maric and hewett out.
Kelly, Williams and Francou in.
Hardley Reid.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all night.
Mine has to be Elijah Hewett. I wasn't sure where he fit into our long-term plans coming into the season, but I think he's taken a real step forward this year. Who's yours?
I get that they are different leagues and do whatever is best for themselves but I don’t get the thinking of overlapping the games.
I guess the wafl punish the fixture after the AFL does to work around that, it really frustrates me how many times the games overlap.
Don’t they realise that a lot of eagles fans would go to a game or at least watch the stream but miss out when the main team is playing same time.
With the AFL game out of the way on Friday would have been great to watch the ressies on Saturday arvo . No go .
I reckon it’s bloody stupid.
Deep breaths…
A very disappointing outing today. Weirdly, I think we had some individual performances that us really stood up, but the team as a whole was just completely destroyed by a very strong Blues outfit. The most disappointing part for me was simply the margin in that last quarter. Conceding the last 3 goals of the game for the margin to blow out past 50 was really a punch to the gut after about 2.5 quarters of somewhat competitive footy. Let's see what went wrong.
Our Attack:
| ** ** | Chain to Score | D50 to F50 | D50 to Score | Def Half to F50 | Def Half to Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eagles | 18.8 | 14.3 | 4.8 | 30.0 | 13.3 |
| Eagles’ 2026 Ave | 19.7 | 18.2 | 8.1 | 28.9 | 11.7 |
| 2026 League Ave | 21.9 | 23.6 | 10.3 | 32.3 | 13.7 |
Transition numbers paint a strong picture this week. Chain to score is unimpressively okay. Transition and scoring from defensive half was actually pretty good. But transition and scoring from defensive 50 was abysmal. I’d say that stat has more to do with our defence than our offence this week. With those transition numbers we managed to get the ball inside 50 49 times, which is actually not a bad number. The bad part is our scoring efficiency of just 38.7% and the fact that we only took 4 marks inside 50 for the match. All 4 to Waterman and all in the last quarter.
All this basically confirms what I thought while watching live. Carlton were really good at restricting the speed of our movement, only letting us get corridor ball movement in the last when they were tired. The upside of this is that we were really good at transitioning the ball against a tight defence. The downside is that it shows that our inexperienced forwardline just can’t function with that slower ball movement.
Overall, it was a bad performance, but it wasn’t that far off.
Our Defence:
| ** ** | Chain to Score | D50 to F50 | D50 to Score | Def Half to F50 | Def Half to Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blues | 27.7 | 40.0 | 22.5 | 40.0 | 21.5 |
| Blues Ave | 22.1 | 24.8 | 11.8 | 32.3 | 12.8 |
| 2026 League Ave | 21.9 | 23.6 | 10.3 | 32.3 | 13.7 |
Look at those fucking numbers. Do I even need to say anything? I don’t think I will.
Our Midfield:
| ** ** | CBA | CC | CC/CBA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Williams | 25 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Pittonet | 24 | 3 | 0.13 |
| Reid | 24 | 9 | 0.38 |
| Gewett | 21 | 3 | 0.14 |
| Cripps | 20 | 2 | 0.10 |
| Walsh | 20 | 4 | 0.20 |
| Yeo | 18 | 3 | 0.17 |
| Graham | 17 | 1 | 0.06 |
| Smith | 16 | 1 | 0.06 |
| Hewett | 13 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Hough | 11 | 1 | 0.09 |
| Ainsworth | 10 | 1 | 0.10 |
| McKay | 5 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Duff-Tytler | 4 | 0 | 0.00 |
| Duursma | 4 | 0 | 0.00 |
Firstly, holy shit! Reid was good. Getting a centre clearance nearly 40% of the time might just be some sort of record. I’ve never seen someone go that far past 30% before. Other than Reid, Yeo was pretty solid, and then nothing. Amazingly, centre clearances were still even, 14 all, just from Reid’s dominance. Stoppage clearances were much less favourable as we lost them 20-34, but the worst result by far was losing the contested possession count 114-142. Losing the contested count by 28 is just about unforgivable.
| ** ** | CBA | Tackles | Pressure Acts | - | CBA | Tackles | Pressure Acts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Williams | 25 | 2 | 5 | Pittonet | 24 | 1 | 13 |
| Reid | 24 | 3 | 20 | Gewett | 21 | 1 | 5 |
| Yeo | 18 | 4 | 15 | Cripps | 20 | 6 | 21 |
| Graham | 17 | 3 | 27 | Walsh | 20 | 4 | 13 |
| Hewett | 13 | 3 | 16 | Smith | 16 | 3 | 8 |
| Hough | 11 | 2 | 13 | Ainsworth | 10 | 2 | 17 |
| ** ** | 108 | 17 | 96 | 111 | 17 | 77 |
Defensively we were absolutely shit house, but it actually wasn’t the midfields’ fault. It’s not perfect. With Carlton having possession for 53% of game time, you’d definitely want more tackles rather than a draw, but with a clear win in pressure acts you can see that at the very least, they were trying their guts out defensively but just couldn't quite get those extras to stick.
Definitely not a good performance, but partially just because Reid was that good, the final score is just bad.
So where did we lose? Defence
Alright, I will talk about our team defence.
Firstly, those transition numbers are truly the worst I’ve ever seen. Not so much the scores from transition which are awful, but we’ve had worse (I’d like to credit the back six, but that’s more on Carlton). The actual transition numbers show that every time Carlton touched the footy in the back half of the ground there was a 40% chance that the footy would end up in their forward 50. That’s worse than in the Sydney and St Kilda games. That resulted in a massive 61 inside 50s, and concerningly 20 marks inside 50. Because of that, Carlton ended up scoring 52.5% of the time the ball went in there.
So, why was our team defence so bad? First thing that everyone will look at is the tackle count which says that despite Carlton having possession of the footy for 53% of game time compared to our paltry 32%, they actually smashed us in the tackle count 61-48. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. It’s appalling.
There was another reason why we couldn’t tackle at all this game, but doesn’t really make anything better. Despite it being our number one defensive goal, and Mini highlighting it before the match, we were completely unable to prevent Carlton’s uncontested marking game. They average 98.8 marks a game and we conceded 133. That is awful. It was especially bad in the first quarter where we kept giving up uncontested marks in the centre of the ground, and even though we fixed that up as the game went on, they just went wide and outworked our zone defence. If there’s any one part of the game we should be disappointed in. It’s this.
And so overall, I’d say defence was at WAFL level.
The BOG Candidates:
Harley Reid: No surprises here. Reid was not just the best Eagle, he was the best player afield. He even managed the 5th highest champion data ranking of the entire round. 23 disposals, 15 contested, resulting in 10 inside 50s, 1 goal, and 657m gained. But that’s not all, his contest work was also best afield with his previously mentioned 9 centre clearances bringing his total clearance count up to 12. But even that’s not all because he had 3 tackles, 20 pressure acts, and even 2 spoils. Yes, he actually had more spoils that Starcevich. If it wasn’t for the dire result, this would be talked up as his career best game.
Rhett Bazzo: Shades of that game where we all flipped from “Hedwards is shit”, to “Hedwards is the shit”. In a game where our defence was almost non-existent, Bazoo actually managed to be flawless on the stat sheet. One contested intercept mark, 3 tackles, a game high 7 spoils, and the only player on the ground to have multiple contested one on one wins, finishing the day 3-0. He only had the 6 disposals, when you’re defending that well, it doesn’t matter.
Great:
Jack Graham: Tied with Reid for our highest disposals with 23 touches, he played a bit more on the outside which resulted in only 6 contested possessions, but he made up for it with his bread and butter pressure. While he only managed to record 3 tackles, his 27 pressure acts meant that he had 6 more than the next best on the ground. All of that with 4 clearances in a game where we were smashed in that area and I can say he had a great game.
Bailey Williams: Only had 11 touches, but from those he had 5 clearances, 2 goals and a goal assist. Even thought thats probably not exactly how we drew it up, that’s a really solid game for a ruckman. Even better is that he actually dominated hitouts 34-22 against a ruckman that I think is really underrated in Pittonet. Still playing great footy.
Bo Allan: Not the best statline this week with only 15 touches, but I thought he was really impactful with them and was really good at winning the ball on his own merits. He had 4 intercept possessions and 5 ground ball gets. His goal where he spoiled the footy, ran forward to get the handball receive and then slotted it on the run should be enough to show even the biggest doubters that there’s definitely something here.
Liam Baker: One of only three Eagles who had 20 disposals this week with exactly that many. Bakes picked up a game high 6 intercept possessions, as well as 8 ground ball gets. His disposal left a bit to be desired, but his ball winning ability on the defensive side of the ground reminded me of his 2025 form.
Hamish Davis: A bit more of a lowkey great game here, but I thought Davis played his role very well, especially as the game wore on. While he only had the 13 touches, he had 5 intercept possessions, 5 ground ball gets, 3 tackles, 17 pressure acts, and most impressively, a game high 3 intercept marks. Same as always for Davis, turning into a really good role player.
Brady Hough: Played the first half on Walsh and was completely ineffectual to be honest, but after half time he was moved onto Jagga Smith and was much better, restricting him to only 8 touches after 15 in the first half. Back the other way, Houghy had 11 possessions for 2 goals, and picked up 3 clearances. Put them together and you’ve got a great game.
Good:
Tom McCarthy: A bit of a lean game, but still solid. He picked up 19 touches (5 from kick ins) and was a decent distributor off of half back. He only had 1 score involvement from those touches, but that’s more so from his touches being deeper in defence that normal. He was one of three Eagles to win a contested one on one.
Marcus Herbert: Not as flashy as his debut but still a good showing. He picked up 15 touches and really impressed me with his positioning as he picked up a game high 3 intercept marks. He didn’t do much else of note in terms of defending, so that’s an area to improve.
Milan Murdock: Lean numbers by his lofty expectations, but 14 touches still puts him in the upper echelon of Eagles today. He kicked the 1 goal and his pressure was really good with 3 tackles, 19 pressure acts, and even 2 spoils.
Elliot Yeo: Had 15 touches and was the only Eagle other than Reid to have multiple centre clearances with his 3. He also had a team high 4 tackles to go alongside 15 pressure acts. Unfortunately, he only went at 40% efficiency which really hurts his rank.
Okay:
Willem Duursma: Played predominately forward in the first half and looked pretty good without excelling. After kicking one goal, he was moved to the wing and then the centre, but by then he seemed to struggle with switching gears and didn’t have much influence.
Jake Waterman: Was completely invisible for the first three quarters but saved himself was a worse rating by having a really good final quarter were he picked up 7 disposals, a game high 4 marks inside 50, and kicked... 3 behind. To all the people who have said Waterman was playing like shit because he keeps kicking 3.3, this is what he could be doing instead.
Ryan Maric: Let’s get the elephant out of the way quick. This year, Maric has been playing bruise free footy, and while I noticed it here and there earlier in the year, this game was particularly egregious. That being said, he still had 17 touches on the wing and I believe his good outweighed the bad. But just barely. Needs to do better.
Bad:
Jack Hutchinson: One of my favourites but my boy was all rust this week. Only had 7 touches and was pretty awful with them. He did still manage 3 tackles and 16 pressure acts which is what I really like about him, but there’s no denying he had a stinker (but it was really fun watching him ruck with a 12cm height difference in the last quarter. Poor bugger).
Elijah Hewett: Starting with the good points. He had the exact same defensive stats as Hutch (3 tackles and 16 pressure acts), but after being backed to play in the middle in the absence of TK, having only 11 touches and 0 clearances is just not good enough. He used to rack up clearances like he was Reid 2.0, but he’s been terrible this year. Kinda concerning.
Brandon Starcevich: Continuing his awful start to life in West Coast colours, Starc had another stinker. Only had 10 touches (2 from kick ins) and seemed to trail which ever forward he had by about 30m as he only managed a pitiful 1 contested one on one (which he lost). He had 0 tackles again, which I know it isn’t his job a key defender, but it makes me wonder what he’s doing if he can’t touch the footy or the forwards. He finished with 1 spoil which means that, Duggan, Reid, and even the 4’8” Murdock had more presence in defence.
The Rest: I normally try to rank everyone, but we had so many passengers today that it was hard to write anything at all about a lot of them. I think that’s what really made the difference today. We actually had some pretty great individual performances, but too many players didn’t put in the defensive effort required.
Stat Leaders:
Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.
Harley Reid - 21.6 Champion Data Rating Points (Walsh 18)
Harley Reid - 10 Inside 50s (Ainsworth 8)
Harley Reid - 657m Gained (Wilson 478)
Liam Baker - 6 Intercept Possessions (Cowan 6)
Bailey Williams - 34 Hitouts (Pittonet 18)
Harley Reid - 9 Centre Clearances (Walsh 4)
Harley Reid - 12 Clearances (Cripps 9)
Jake Waterman - 4 Marks Inside 50 (McGovern 4)
Marcus Herbert & Hamish Davis - 3 & 3 Intercept Marks (Dean 3)
Jake Waterman & Bailey WIlliams - 5 & 4 Shots at Goal (McKay 4)
Jack Graham - 27 Pressure Acts (Cripps 21)
Rhett Bazzo - 7 Spoils (Dean 6)
Rhett Bazzo - 3 Contested One on One Wins (Dean 1)
16 Stat Leaders (+2 from last week) (5 Draws)
Wuurm Watcher
Jobe Shanahan & Jack Graham & Bo Allan - 32.7km/h & 32.6km/h & 32.6km/h Maximum Speed (McGovern 32.5km/h)
Jack Graham & Hamish Davis - 9.7km/h & 9.5km/h Average Speed (Smith 9.5km/h)
Willem Duursma & Jack Hutchinson & Milan Murdock & Bo Allan & Marcus Herbert - 9.7km/h & 9.5km/h & 9.3km/h & 9.3km/h & 9.3km/h Average Speed in Attack (No Blues listed)
That was a really disappointing way to end our really good run of form but I’m holding onto the fact that Carlton seems to just match up against us really well. That made 7 wins in a row for them with an average margin of 63 points. While none of our lines played particularly well, it was only our defence that was completely uncompetitive. That gives me hope that we can fix that up before Adelaide next week. Namely with Oli ’11 tackles’ Francou coming in (I doubt that actually happens, but I really hope it does).
And while I'm at it, let's pour one out for Crippa. One of the most underrated players of the last 15 years.
