Australian Football

East Perth

a right royal tradition

Known as the Royals, East Perth have one of the proudest traditions in Western Australian football, but the club has also endured its share of hard times. Among the unique achievements of the East Perth Football Club are:

• providing the winner of the Sandover Medal for the outstanding player in the WAFL on a record eighteen occasions
• providing more Eric Tassie Medallists (three) than any other club in Australia
• winning a record five consecutive WAFL premierships between 1919 and 1923

In addition, East Perth is unique among Australian football clubs in having an official heraldic symbol of coat of arms and crest, thereby further emphasising the ‘royal’ connection.

East Perth’s origins, however, were anything but regal. In 1902, with the population of Perth standing at little more than 10,000, employees of the Union Soap Factory and the nearby Excelsior Confectionery Factory joined forces to form the Union Football Club, which over the course of the next four seasons experienced considerable success at junior level. Encouraged by this success the club made an application to join the Western Australian Football Association in 1906 as ‘East Perth’ and, despite reservations on the part of some WAFA delegates who considered that the new club would be out of its depth, this application was accepted.

Concern about the new club’s ability proved unfounded. Appearing in patriotic red, white and blue playing uniforms (which may have given rise to the nickname ‘Royals’) the team rapidly became competitive, and indeed reached a premiership play off in only its fifth season. The Royals lost to East Fremantle on that occasion, 2.10 (22) to 4.5 (29), but the team’s supporters could have been excused for believing that success was just around the corner. However, over the course of the next seven seasons East Perth were to contest only one finals series (in 1915) and win just 38 of 101 matches played; it was not to be until after world war one that the Royals were first to savour the taste of premiership glory.

The man generally accorded most credit for guiding the Royals to the top of the tree is Phil Matson.[1] Born in South Australia, Matson had a varied and highly successful playing career in both his home state and Western Australia before taking up the reins as playing coach of East Perth in 1918. With all clubs having suffered serious player losses during the first world war the standard of the competition inevitably deteriorated, and, as has frequently been shown throughout football history, such circumstances frequently encourage domination by a single club. In the WAFL between 1919 and 1923 that club was East Perth.

In Matson’s first season as coach the Royals reached the challenge final only to lose to East Fremantle by 21 points, 8.5 (53) to 11.8 (74), having previously succumbed by 26 points against the same club in the final a week earlier. One year later, however, the club broke through for its first ever WAFL pennant, defeating East Fremantle in the premiership decider by 22 points, 10.8 (68) to 7.4 (46). The Royals then went on to defeat both the premiers of the Kalgoorlie competition (which in those days was virtually as strong as the WAFL) and a combined goldfields team to earn the title of state champions, an achievement they were to repeat in both 1922 and 1923.

After defeating East Fremantle by 22 and 7 points in the premiership deciders of 1920 and 1921 respectively the Royals arguably reached their peak during 1922, and this was clearly evidenced during a five week mid-season tour of the goldfields and eastern states. During this tour East Perth lost only 1 of 5 matches played, recording excellent wins against a combined goldfields team, a Bendigo Football League representative side, and South Australian clubs Norwood and West Adelaide, which later in the season would contest the SANFL grand final. The solitary loss was by a single point against middle ranking VFL club St Kilda, and given that the match was played in conditions completely foreign to the Royals - wet, cold, and extremely muddy - the result could hardly be regarded as ignominious. The extent of East Perth’s perceived dominance of the competition was clearly illustrated in 1924 when a record eight Royals players were included in the state team which travelled to Hobart for the interstate carnival. A few months later, however, the five-in-a-row era came to an abrupt end in a semi final when East Fremantle scraped home by 8 points.

The Royals were by no means a spent force, however. In the 1926 final they annihilated Subiaco by 50 points to clinch the flag without needing to exercise their right of challenge, and they won again a year later when South Fremantle were the victims. After a hard fought loss against arch rivals East Fremantle in the challenge final of 1928, however, the club, minus the sage and energetic guidance of Matson, plummeted to last in 1929, and it was clear that a fundamental re-building process was called for.[2]

rebuilding and revival

The Royals did not remain in the doldrums for long. In 1932 they once again reached the ultimate game of the season, but on this occasion, as indeed in every subsequent grand final clash with West Perth until 2002, the Cardinals proved to have the Royals’ measure.[3]

Between 1933 and 1935 East Perth finished fourth, fourth and third, the top sides always proving that bit too accomplished, and 1936 gave no indication of being any better when the team just scraped into the four by one win from West Perth. Under the canny guidance of former East Fremantle player ‘Jerry’ Dolan however, the Royals were establishing a reputation as a team of battlers, and events over the course of the following month were to reiterate this. Indeed, the 1936 WANFL[4] finals series would surely have to be ranked as one of the most sensational in the entire history of Australian football anywhere.

In the first semi final East Perth were pitted against Subiaco, and after a dour struggle emerged a single point to the good, despite having 4 fewer scoring shots in a low scoring game. The consensus then was that the team had already achieved more than might reasonably have been expected. However, astonishingly, the preliminary final (or ‘final’ as it has often tended to be known in Western Australia) saw the Royals again emerge with a 1 point victory, this time against East Fremantle.

In the grand final East Perth faced Claremont, a side which was to go on to appear in every subsequent grand final until 1940, winning the premiership on three occasions. This year, however, belonged to the Royals, although once again the game was tight, tense, and dramatic, Herb Screaigh’s goal with the last kick of the match giving East Perth the unaccustomed breathing space of 11 points, 11.5 (71) to 9.6 (60). After entering the finals as complete outsiders the Royals had sensationally managed to land the flag with a total winning margin over 3 games of just 13 points.[5]

The years leading up to the onset of world war two saw East Perth rejoin the pursuing pack, although with the exception of the 1941 season they always at least managed to contest the finals before the cessation of senior football in 1942. From 1942-4 the WANFL conducted an under age competition only, although records for those seasons continue, somewhat contentiously, to be deemed ‘official’ by the league. Thus the Royals’ 1944 premiership, which was secured with a 56 point grand final victory over East Fremantle in front of 8,991 spectators, is officially accorded the same status as the club’s sixteen open age triumphs.[6]

The years immediately following world war one had yielded considerable success for East Perth, but in the wake of a second global conflict there was to be no repetition. Indeed, it would not be until 1952 that the Royals would again contest a finals series, and even then they were quickly bundled out of contention by Claremont.

Three years earlier the East Perth committee, in an attempt to provide the club with a fiercer image, had proposed the adoption of a new nickname, ‘the Eagles’. However, this never really caught on, and indeed the club’s supporters were jokingly wont to refer to the team as “seventeen galahs and a sparrow”, the ‘Sparrow’ concerned being Frank, the East Perth captain of the time.

Many Australian football clubs of the 1940s and ‘50s sought to instigate an improvement in fortunes by introducing new, tougher-sounding nicknames,[7] but what was actually needed in such instances was more a change in attitude, coupled as often as not with the recruitment of better players.

Both these developments coincided happily at East Perth in the mid 1950s. At the end of the 1955 season favourite son ‘Mick’ Cronin concluded his second term as coach having only managed to get his team into the finals once in four years. However, in hindsight it is possible to see how he was responsible for laying the foundations for the success which was to come the Royals’ way during the second half of the decade. For example, it was under Cronin that such top class players as 1958 Sandover Medallist Ted Kilmurray, Paul Seal, Kevin McGill, John Watts, and most notable of all perhaps, Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer, took their senior bows.

the Farmer era and 'Bible' Jack

The 1956 season was, in numerous respects, a seminal one for the East Perth Football Club. In the first place, it was precisely fifty years since the club had joined the WANFL (or the WAFA as it was then known), and to commemorate this the club opened a new all brick grandstand at Perth Oval. In order to enhance spectators’ views from this new edifice the oval was re-aligned to run from north to south, and at the risk of sounding crass it would perhaps be fair to observe that this was symbolic of an impending change of direction, not only for East Perth but also for the sport as a whole.

Australian football in the early twenty-first century is big business, but the process leading to this state of affairs has been prolonged and complex. In Western Australia one of the key stages in this process occurred in 1956 when, thanks chiefly to the largesse of committee man Roy Hull, East Perth became the first WAFL club to introduce an official system of payment to players. Prior to that, there is no doubt that methods of conferring financial rewards on players had existed, but these had been essentially covert in nature, and it was only with the implementation of the East Perth scheme that the whole matter was rendered ‘above board’.[8]

Developments off the field are all very well, but it is achievements on it which are a football club’s raison d’être. Often it is only by abandoning old methods and implementing totally new ideas that such achievements are realised, and this is precisely what the East Perth committee did in December 1955 when it appointed Jack Sheedy as playing coach for the 1956 season. Sheedy was a 210 game veteran from arch rivals East Fremantle, and this fact on its own was enough to fuel a certain amount of controversy among Royals supporters.[9] However, the battle-scarred veteran did not waste any time in showing that he meant business. After putting the players through a tougher pre-season than any of them could remember he was soon involved in an incident which, in retrospect, can be seen as having played a large part in breaking the ice, and, moreover, in according him what amounted to hero status at Perth Oval. During the opening round of the season he was reported by field umpire Ray Montgomery for allegedly using abusive language toward him. At the tribunal hearing Sheedy produced a bible on which he solemnly swore that he had not been the player responsible, Montgomery having mistaken him for an (unnamed) team mate.

In the upshot, the tribunal’s guilty verdict was almost irrelevant when compared to the legend of ‘Bible Jack’ to which Sheedy’s colourful defence gave rise. More tangibly, Jack Sheedy’s vibrant personality and intense, almost fanatical determination to succeed had a direct and discernible impact on the team. East Perth won 14 out of 19 home and away matches in 1956, twice as many as from one game more a year earlier, to head the ladder going into the finals. Once there they proved their superiority with two hard fought wins against South Fremantle by 7 and 13 points to cap off what had been in every sense a complete year. In addition to the premiership, the club had provided in the person of Graham Farmer both the Sandover Medallist as the fairest and best player in the WANFL, and the Eric Tassie Medallist for the outstanding player at the Perth carnival.

Farmer was in every respect the epitome of the champion player. Possessed of supreme all round ability, he also boasted a rare and special talent that few others have shared. Put simply, he was an innovator, who by means of great imagination and what amounted to a kind of intuitive genius took the game of Australian football along avenues no one had hitherto been aware existed. If any single individual can be said to have played the major role in transforming Australian football from what was basically a stop-start, prop and kick affair into the fluid, play on style which is now the norm, that player was Farmer. East Perth team mate John Watts described Farmer’s uniqueness thus:

“He would evaluate the best player ... to give it to. He never got rid of the ball to get himself out of trouble ... He always managed to get the ball away to an advantage to the team ... He played the game correctly ... Even when he fell to the ground he was still thinking, he’d still have possession of it, and (be) thinking where he was going to place it.” [10]

Jack Sheedy’s coaching philosophy admirably reinforced and complemented Farmer’s approach. Under Sheedy, East Perth played a style of football which in many ways was fifteen or twenty years ahead of its time. For one thing, handball was used as an offensive weapon, rather than merely as a last resort when a player got into trouble.[11] Other sides had difficulty coping with this style and in Sheedy’s first six years as coach the Royals were easily the outstanding side in the competition. Out of a total of 138 matches played between 1956 and 1961 East Perth won 106, drew 2, and lost just 30. In addition, the team headed the ladder after the home and away rounds in four out of those six seasons, reaching the grand final every time for wins in 1956, 1958 and 1959.

scuppered by the Swans

In 1961 the Royals put in one of the finest home and away campaigns in the club’s history, winning all but 2 of 21 games for the season. A 48 point win over Cinderella club Swan Districts in the second semi final earned them odds on favouritism for the grand final re-match a fortnight later, but the Royals were on the wrong end of one of the biggest upsets in Western Australian football history as Swans won by 24 points to record their first ever WANFL premiership.

That 1961 grand final was ‘Polly’ Farmer‘s last ever game for East Perth, the star ruckman transferring to Geelong in the VFL where he went on to enhance his reputation still further. Farmer’s importance to the Royals was emphasised in 1962 when the team missed the finals for the first time since 1955. Sheedy’s impact was also beginning to wane, and after the club slumped to the wooden spoon in 1964 with just 3 wins out of 21 he was replaced as coach by Kevin Murray.

Murray, an experienced campaigner from Fitzroy in the VFL, gave East Perth needed impetus both on and off the field. After narrowly missing the finals in 1965 the Royals re-emerged as a top league power a year later, losing narrowly to Perth in both the second semi and the grand final. Murray returned to Victoria in 1967 but the bitter taste of defeat was to linger at Perth Oval for some time, the Royals going down in the ‘big one’ in each of the following three seasons. Perth in ‘67 and ‘68 and West Perth in ‘69 were the Royals’ conquerors, and rarely if ever can a side have experienced so much difficulty in taking that vital final step to success.

Unusually, at least in the modern era, the 1969 grand final did not mark the end of the season for East Perth, as the club was involved in an historic trip to Delhi in India where it engaged in two exhibition matches against Subiaco, the first ever official Australian football matches to be played on the sub-continent. A total of approximately 8,000 spectators watched the two games.

Back to more familiar surroundings in 1970 the Royals again fell short of the mark when they failed by four points against Perth in the preliminary final. A grand final loss against perennial nemesis West Perth followed in 1971, but in 1972, at long last, the team returned to the winners enclosure with a 9.17 (71) to 8.8 (56) grand final defeat of Claremont.

Coached by ‘Mad Mal’ Brown, one of the most colourful personalities ever to represent the club, East Perth had a half-back line second to none, with half back flanker Ken McAullay securing the Simpson Medal for best afield in the grand final to go with the Tassie and Simpson Medals he had won earlier in the season while representing Western Australia at the Perth interstate carnival.[12]

Immediately following their premiership victory East Perth became the first Western Australian club to participate in the Australian club championships in Adelaide, and although the Royals lost their semi final to Carlton, the series tends to be remembered more for the sight of Malcolm Brown going berserk and laying into every Blues player within reach than it is for the results on the scoreboard.

Brown’s antics on this occasion were by no means unprecedented. Over the course of his entire career, he made more appearances before the WANFL tribunal than any other player in history (the precise number of these appearances is disputed, but they seem certain to have at least numbered in the twenties). Brown transferred to Richmond in 1974 where he maintained his reputation in every sense, missing his new club’s grand final triumph over North Melbourne that year through suspension. All this said, it would be unfair to classify Brown as nothing more than a football thug. In 1969, for example, he won the Sandover Medal for fairest and best player in the WANFL, and he was runner up for the same award in 1972. He also won East Perth’s individual award on three occasions. Without him in 1974 the team struggled, slipping out of the four and managing only 10 wins out of 21 matches for the year.

return of the prodigal son

‘Mad Mal’ returned to Western Australian football in 1975, but it was Claremont rather than East Perth which benefited from his services. Instead the Royals, now coached by Ray Giblett, were forced to concentrate on re-building, a process which was to bear earlier fruit than even the most optimistic of their supporters might reasonably have anticipated. In 1975 the Royals reached the first semi final before losing to South Fremantle, but then prior to the start of the 1976 season came the moment East Perth fans could have been excused for dreaming about for fifteen years, the return of ‘the prodigal son’, Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer, to Perth Oval.

This time around, however, things would inevitably be different: there would be no deft palming of the ball straight into the eager path of a sprinting team mate, no forty metre handpasses splitting opposition backlines asunder, for Farmer, now into his forties, was returning ‘home’ as non-playing coach, a role he had performed with only limited success at Geelong in 1974 and 1975. Prior to that he had been playing coach of West Perth from 1968-71, steering that club to grand final triumphs (over the Royals) in both 1969 and 1971.

Farmer’s return to his original stamping ground had an immediate impact. In the opening match of the 1976 season the Royals dispensed a 14 goal hiding to reigning premier West Perth and thereafter never looked back. With 16 wins from 21 games the side finished 2 wins clear of second placed South Fremantle against whom a comfortable 31 point second semi final win set up what ought on the face of things to have been the formality of a grand final meeting with the season’s surprise packet, Perth.

The reality of the situation, however, was that the Royals had emerged from the South Fremantle clash with what the club’s annual report described as:

..... a team decimated in victory. The respite of two weeks produced an urgency of ‘repair and maintenance’ on bruised and broken limbs ...... The doctors and trainers worked days, nights and weekends to try and repair what, in some cases, proved to be impossible in the short time available. [13]

The upshot was that, despite trailing by only 11 points at quarter time after the Demons had enjoyed first use of what seemed a five or six-goal breeze, the Royals never managed to get a run on - an eventuality rendered increasingly less likely after the rains came during the second term - and ended up losing by 23 points, 11.3 (69) to 13.14 (92).

The grand final issue of the ‘Football Budget’ for 1976 called East Perth under Farmer “one of the best teams in the club’s history”[14] but unfortunately history only truly ratifies such assertions when they are backed up with premierships. Sadly, East Perth under Farmer were not to get another chance at glory.[15] In 1977 the team just scraped into the four but were comfortably accounted for by West Perth in the first semi before, in somewhat controversial circumstances, Farmer was displaced as coach and the position handed to Barry Cable. In 1978 Cable was nearing the end of an illustrious playing career in which he had played for Perth (225 games) and North Melbourne (116 games) as well as winning the 1966 Tassie Medal, three Sandovers and no fewer than eight club fairest and best awards; Cable, who had been an ardent Royals supporter as a boy, now had a burning ambition to coach a premiership team, but two thirds of the way through the season it appeared he would have to wait at least a little while longer to realise that ambition as the Royals languished in sixth spot with only 6 wins from 14 games. Victory in each of the final seven home-and-away matches of the season was essential if the club was to have any realistic hope of contesting the finals - and, sensationally, this is just what was achieved, with the side actually gaining the double chance on percentage after a nine-point triumph over West Perth in the last round.

East Perth suffered their first defeat since round fourteen in the second semi-final when reigning premiers Perth confirmed their flag favouritism to the tune of 29 points. This was followed, however, by a 112 point annihilation of South Fremantle in the preliminary final a week later, and there was not surprisingly a mood of considerable optimism in the Royals camp prior to the grand final re-match with the Demons.

The 1978 grand final was the fifth since 1966 to feature East Perth and Perth, and ominously all four previous clashes had gone the way of the Demons. This time, however, the Royals showed great resolve in atrociously wet conditions to run out winners by two points, 11.15 (81) to 12.7 (79). Ruck-rover Ian Miller won the Simpson Medal for best afield, while East Perth were also well served by wingman Phil Kelly, ruckman Wayne Duke, centre half back Kevin Bryant, and centreman Larry Kickett. Barry Cable had thus achieved his ambition at the first time of asking, but it would be a long time before Royals’ fans could again rejoice after a grand final. Cable remained at Perth Oval for a further two seasons, with the Royals contesting the finals both times but falling a long way short of premiership contention.

a long time between drinks

In the sixteen seasons between 1980 and 1995, East Perth got no further than two third-place finishes in 1981 and 1992. The side also contested the major round in 1982, 1984 and 1991, but failed to win a single finals match in any of those years. Not until 1996, when the team finished the home and away rounds at the head of the ladder, was there genuine cause for optimism at Perth Oval. This optimism was reinforced when the Royals scored a hard fought second semi final win over Claremont but a fortnight later on grand final day finals inexperience showed through allowing the Tigers to gain their revenge by just two points after a tight contest. Nevertheless, for the first time in nearly two decades it seemed that East Perth supporters had sound reason to feel confident about the future.

Unfortunately, the 1997 (fourth), ‘98 (fourth) and ‘99 (eighth) seasons did nothing to reinforce this optimism. However, following a pre-season alignment with West Coast, whereby newcomers to the Eagles camp were assigned to undertake Westar duty - when required - with East Perth, the Royals were many pundits’ favourites for the final flag of the millennium. Ultimately, the pundits were to be proved right, but not for the reasons anticipated, as it was actually the Royals ‘old guard’ - players like David Swan, Rod Wheatley, and skipper Jeremy Barnard - who were primarily responsible for bringing the flag back to Perth Oval.[16]

After finishing 3 games clear of second placed Subiaco after the home and away rounds East Perth confirmed their pre-eminence over the Lions with a comfortable 12.9 (81) to 9.7 (61) victory in the second semi final. Subiaco then lost to East Fremantle in the preliminary final.

Two weeks later on grand final day, the Royals - coached, ironically, by an ex-East Fremantle stalwart in Tony Micale - fronted up against their old rivals in pursuit of a fourteenth[17] senior grade flag. Early on the Sharks seemed to be in the ascendancy but East Perth defended well and, thanks more to a series of breakaways than any sustained attacking effort, led 4.1 to 1.4 at the first break. Eleven minutes into the second term the Royals had stretched their lead to 41 points and the game seemed virtually over. However, East Fremantle, spurred on by ruckman Jason Morgan, fought back well to close the gap to just 11 points at half time.

The third quarter saw tough, uncompromising, 'Victorian style’ footy, with a series of delays owing to the blood rule. While general play was fairly even, the Royals kicked better to add 3.2 to 1.6 for the term and extend their lead to 19 points. Thereafter it was a blue and black procession as East Perth assumed full authority all over the ground to win 18.11 (119) to 11.14 (80). West Coast rookie Dean Cox won the Simpson Medal for East Perth after a sterling effort in ruck, while Rod Wheatley, Callum Chambers, Devan Perry and Grant Holman also performed with distinction. The only upsetting aspect of the day from an East Perth standpoint was the broken jaw sustained by Kaine Marsh during the third term which prevented him receiving his premiership medallion alongside his team mates after the match.

All told, this was the eleventh time the Royals and Sharks had contested a grand final, with the score now 7-4 in East Perth’s favour.

Much more importantly, however, the club had firmly re-established itself as one of the competition’s heavyweights, a position it reinforced in 2001 with a convincing second successive premiership. The victims on grand final day on this occasion were East Fremantle’s near neighbours South Fremantle, whom the Royals held to just three points after half time en route to a 17.18 (120) to 5.8 (victory). It was the third occasion East Perth and South Fremantle had met on grand final day, and the third time East Perth had emerged victorious.

In 2002 the Royals, Subiaco and West Perth staged a three way battle for supremacy for most of the season, with East Perth finally clinching the minor premiership on percentage from the Lions, with traditional rivals West Perth a win further back in third place. The Royals then secured a third consecutive flag in straight sets, overcoming Subiaco in the second semi final and the Falcons with unexpected comfort in the grand final. Final scores on grand final day were East Perth 15.14 (104) to West Perth 5.14, with Ryan Turnbull claiming a Simpson Medal to add to the Sandover won in 2001. It was the second time the Royals had won three consecutive premierships; on the previous occasion, between 1919 and 1921, they went on to add two more. This time ‘round, however, such sustained pre-eminence proved beyond them, and in 2003 the Royals’ 2002 grand final victims, West Perth, had the satisfaction of ending East Perth’s season at the preliminary final stage.

Things got even worse in 2004 as, after a season of irritating inconsistency, the Royals missed out on the finals for the first time since 1999, with their record of 11 wins from 20 matches only proving good enough for fifth place on the ladder. Then, in 2005, the side finished even further off the pace, winning just 6 of its 20 matches to finish sixth, albeit no fewer than 20 premiership points adrift of fifth placed West Perth. After that, there was a nominal improvement in 2006 as the Royals managed 7 wins to claim fifth place on the ladder before returning to the September fray in 2007 with an 11-9 record, good enough for fourth spot heading into the finals. However, despite coach Darren Bewick’s pre-match assertion that his side would not be out of its depth in its first semi final clash with a much more experienced South Fremantle combination, that is more or less how things transpired. Admittedly, until half time the Royals were well in contention, trailing by a mere 3 points, but in the second half the Bulldogs proved immeasurably superior, adding 10 goals to 3 to win convincingly by 49 points.

The key development of the last decade or so was the announcement in October 2012 of an alignment between AFL club West Coast and East Perth. Under the agreement, the new players taken by the Eagles in the 2012 National Draft would play for the Royals when not selected to play in the AFL. (As noted above, a similar arrangement had existed briefly a decade or so earlier, but it had been adjudged a failure and rapidly abandoned.) Then, for a period of five years from 2014, East Perth would be entitled to pick any non-selected West Coast players whatsoever. To call the arrangement - and a similar one involving Fremantle and Peel Thunder - controversial would be an understatement. Many people felt that the soul had been ripped from the body of the state’s oldest football competition, rendering it virtually meaningless.

Although the infusion of Eagles-linked talent was minimal in 2013 it seems to have had a discernible effect. Fourth in 2012 the Royals made it as afar as the grand final a year later only to be comprehensively outplayed by arch rivals West Perth. It was a triumph not only for the Falcons but also, one suspects, for most of the supporters of the league’s other six non-aligned clubs.

When the full scale alignment was implemented in 2014 one of Western Australian football’s longest serving administrators, Brian Atkinson, resigned in protest, saying:

"My passion for and interest in West Australian football, extending over 60 years, has diminished significantly following the return of the aligned-clubs arrangements.

"That did so much damage to the WAFL just over a decade ago, until the WAFC of the day threw it out as a failed experiment.

"Many of the current commissioners did not have to sit through the farce of that time which destroyed the WAFL as a fair competition and provided no improvement at all to the AFL clubs."[18]

At the time of his resignation East Perth were comfortably perched atop the WAFL premiership ladder having won their previous 9 games in a row. The Royals went on to claim the minor premiership and progress straight into the grand final on the strength of a 13.12 (90) to 7.16 (58) second semi final defeat of Subiaco. However, when the same two sides met again a fortnight later in the grand final the Lions had their revenge, winning by 16 points, 11.16 (82) to 9.12 (66). The Western Australian football loving public voted with their feet with just 11,987 attending the match.

Since 2014 the Royals have not really looked capable of procuring a premiership, but Peel Thunder’s exploits in 2016 and 2017 have ensured that the alignment issue remains contentious. That said, not all voices are dissenting. For example, “AdelaideDocker”, writing for The Roar, maintained:

These affiliations are, no matter the criticism, ultimately good for the game.

They allow, as often popularised in the media, for clubs to play out-of-form or injured players without the high-level pressure of the AFL season. These games are usually played at a lower-pace and intensity than at AFL level, and are often the place for players to find form – take Lin Jong’s scintillating form in the VFL final, or the often-weekly news of injured players returning through their team’s affiliate side, for instance. Imagine the game we know and love if there was no opportunity for injured or out-of-form players to ease their return through before returning to the big leagues.

They benefit the state-level players, by exposing them to games in the presence of their more experienced colleagues. Say what you will about the presence of senior players in a lower-league, but the experience their often-younger and less experienced state-league peers can gain from playing against them is often invaluable, and extremely important. For example, the Peel-listed players who played last weekend in their premiership alongside the Fremantle-listed players have not only had the opportunity to win a premiership – great for any player of any level, of course – but have experienced this alongside players from the actual AFL.[19]

The arguments will doubtless continue, but if crowd figures are anything to go by the grassroots game in Western Australia is losing its appeal, and it is at least arguable that football needs a vibrant grassroots level if it is to survive. Equally arguably, the onus is on the WAFL’s two aligned clubs to weigh up the pros and cons of their respective arrangements - for footy as a whole, not just themselves - when they come to an end in four years time.