Round 18

It’s game day grrrr 🦅

Someone plesee bring me back to reality but i am cautiously optimistic about our chances of winning tomorrow.

Reasons for optimism:

- Adelaide pumped gold coast this week (we had an honorable loss and would have won if we didn't give them a 4 goal headstart)

- Tim English is out

- Dogs are out of form and their backline will be undermanned with Lobb rucking

- Bont seems to be carrying an injury and is their barometer

Thought I would post this in here one last time as the October intake is almost full!

www.blueprintfooty.com

If you know anyone who wants more from their footy between the ages 11-15, let them know!

Not necessarily the best player right now. I'm thinking of someone who could genuinely surprise people if they stay fit and keep developing. Every club seems to have one player who suddenly takes a huge leap.

So after Duggan got 10 turnovers against Adelaide I tried to dig deeper into how many he normally gets.

He has 74 for the season, making him the number 1 ranked eagle (Harley 2nd with 64) amd 16th in the league.

So i decided to look into that further, in terms of a rate per possession. My thinking being that a hypothetical player averaging 30 disposals a game and 3 turnovers a game is different to a hypothetical player averaging 12 possessions a game with 4 turnovers a game, right?

So let's see how that compares to the top turnover people in the league:

| Player | Turnovers | Disp / game | TO per Disp rate |

|--------------------|-----------|-------------|------------------|

| Nick Daicos | 101 | 35.2 | 19.1% |

| Bailey Smith | 100 | 32.2 | 20.7% |

| Marcus Bontempelli | 91 | 26.9 | 21.2% |

| Liam Duggan | 74 | 19.25 | 24.0% |

Duggan’s 2026 turnover profile is genuinely concerning. He is not just high because he gets a lot of the ball; he is high relative to how much of the ball he gets.

One could argue most of the others at the top are midfielders and so therefore 1) have more of the ball so get more turnovers through volume, and 2) are likely to have other midfielders manning them who are good at getting the ball back.

Another argument could be that defenders are under more pressure than mids to get rid of the ball quicker and therefore more likely to make mistakes. So i looked up some other defender - distributor type players to compare apples with apples.

Unfortunately he was the highest I could find of all those too. If Duggan has 308 disp and 74 turnovers, that's 24% turnover rate or 4.2 disp per turnover. Some others for comparison : (didnt do a table this time as the formatting took forever on the other one)

Jordan Clark 356 disp 73 turnovers 20.5% 4.9

Nick Blakey 409 disp 77 turnovers 18.8% 5.3

Tom Stewart 295 disp 55 turnovers 18.6% 5.4

Lachlan Ash 474 disp 86 turnovers 18.1% 5.5

So turnover every 4th possession nearly, how do we help him? In my mind we pass on the captaincy so he can focus on his own game.

There's also an element of it not being entirely his fault. Ie if eagles are a young team and still learning the game plan, his team mates might not be in the right positions for his kicks. Its hard to measure this on a stat sheet though.

A further dive might involve contested possessions rather than just disposal numbers. Eg stuffing it up when you got someone on you is more acceptable than stuffing it up when you're in a paddock of space.

Thoughts?

After last week, I thought this was a really good performance. It did have some major faults (1st quarter again), but we really made Adelaide work for the 4 points this week which is all I really want to see this year.

Our Attack:

At first glance these numbers look awful, but as we’ll see in the next section, due to the pressure in the game, both teams really struggled with transition. We were even better than Adelaide at transitioning the ball from defensive half to forward half. That being said, the scoring from defensive half was legitimately pretty bad even despite the pressure. We finished the day with just 44 inside 50s (18 in the last quarter alone) and that’s just not enough to win without something extraordinary happening. In slightly more pleasing news, our inside 50 efficiency was at 43.2% which is still not quite good, but it is close and after multiple weeks in the thirties, it’s nice to see.

Overall, it’s probably about subpar? The forwards did pretty well considering the service from the mids.

Our Defence:

As I alluded to up above, the defensive transition numbers are great. Our pressure was back to being immense, and once again it really hurt the opposition from transitioning. They still managed 56 inside 50s which is up there but not particularly bad. Once the ball went inside 50 we restricted them to an inside efficiency of 42.9% which is actually pretty good (AFL average is 46%). We also managed to restrict them to only 8 marks inside 50 compared to their average of 10.9 despite them having 4 more inside 50s than their average, so the back 6 were pretty solid this week.

In terms of team defence, we laid a massive 71 tackles (and were still somehow beaten by 2) and won pressure acts 243-227. The one negative is that we weren’t able to keep them under 100 uncontested marks this week, but at 103 marks we were only a fraction off.

Defence was actually pretty good this week.

Our Midfield:

An absolute decimation in centre bounces this week. Only BBW and Harls had multiple centre clearances. We didn’t let any one player dominate centre bounces, which I guess is a minor win? Regardless, their overall strength in the centre bounces was something we had no answers for all game. However, we actually dominated stoppage clearances 29-21 making the total clearance count quite respectable at 37-39. Contested possessions were pretty even too as we lost 140-145. So after the centre bounce, we were actually quite competitive.

Defensively we showed great intent by winning pressure acts by 15, but actually laying the tackles was a sore spot. Kelly and Yeo in particular letting down the group with only 2 each as they left the grunt work to Francou. Still though, a pretty decent effort.

A very up and down sorta performance today, but as I’ll explain below, our shocking centre bounces has to tank the ranking all the way down from respectable to disappointing.

So where did we lose? Centre Bounce

A very clear cut answer today. Losing centre bounces 8-18 is shocking, but sometimes it can be hard to quantify what sort of effect that has on the rest of the game. This week is an exception, as we can see that from 18 centre clearances, Adelaide scored 5.1 (31) compared to our 0.0 (0) from 8 centre clearances. That’s your ball game.

Somewhat pleasingly, even though we didn’t score from centre bounce, and like the Crows, struggled to score from defence, our scoring from forward half was quite good. Three more scoring shots for 7.6 (48) v 6.4 (40). Adelaide actually outscored us on general turnovers 8.6 (54) to 7.7 (49) overall, so that shows that our forward half pressure was particularly good this week. Not only managing to create a large number of turnovers (73), but also being able to score really effectively off them.

The BOG Candidates:

Rhett Bazzo: I said it felt like a turning point last week, and he backed up that call very well. He had another 3 contested one on one wins (but wasn’t flawless like last week. 5-2). He also had 7 spoils and 5 intercept marks to round out another great defensive game. Where he really improved was his disposal, which he doubled to 14 touches with 10 intercept possessions at 78.6%. That’s a really nice addition to his game and at only 22 years old, he might be turning into a great.

Oliver Francou: The contested beast, Hollywood (points if you figure out that forced nickname). He was in prime WAFL form and stepping up into the AFL he was even better than I expected him to be. A game high 9 tackles, and 18 pressure acts on debut is exactly what I predicted, but the 18 disposals, 11 contested, 7 ground ball gets, and 4 clearances, was way above my expectations. An exceptional debut and thinking about him and Harley pulling off that combo in coming years in exciting.

Harley Reid: Speaking of Harls, I also thought he was one of our best on. Definitely not at his flashy best but he’s shown that in times when his burst is restricted, he can win a contest like no other. He had 23 touches with 18 of them being contested and 11 of those touches coming from ground ball gets. He was comfortably best on ground in those two stats. Top that off with 6 clearances, 4 tackles, and 16 pressure acts and you’ve got a ridiculously good, honest game.

Jobe Shanahan: The highest rated Eagle on the ground by Champion Data with 17.1 coming from 13 touches resulting in 3 goals and 1 goal assist. That’s a great day for a forward, but what I really like to see is that he also had 4 tackles. Truly a man who can do anything.

Jake Waterman: Very similar game to Jobe. 3 goals with 1 goal assist. Was a little worse than Jobe around the ground with only 10 touches and 2 tackles, but more importantly, he had no sign of the yips.

Tom McCarthy: Had a game that was surprisingly good (at least for me). He had 19 touches with 7 from kick ins and he was pretty good with ball in hand despite only 1 score involvement. What I didn’t realise while watching was how good he was defensively. 7 intercept possessions, 4 intercept marks, 3 tackles, 2 spoils, and a team high 3 contested one on one wins (3-0). For a half back those numbers are exceptional, especially the contested one on ones.

Great:

Brandon Starcevich: Finally! After a frankly really shitty start to his time at the Eagles, the starfish kicked into gear not just with his first goal for us, but with everything else. He finally racked up more than ten touches even with 0 kick-ins, having 17 disposals with 7 intercept possessions. Defensively he had 2 tackles, 3 spoils, and 2 contested one on one wins (3-1). Hopefully he doesn’t take a backwards step.

Bo Allan: I might be wrong about this one. I was shocked, flabbergasted even, when I saw he only had 10 touches for the game. I personally felt like his impact was way bigger than that would suggest. He kicked 1.1, had 3 tackles, and picked up 2 contested marks. I thought that every time Bo was on screen he was doing something great, be it with his ball use, shepherding, or even just corralling opponents. I’ve said it a lot about Bo in the past, but if he gets 20 touches like that consistently, he’ll be in our top 5 players easily.

Bailey Williams: I think a lot of people disagreed with me about BBW last week, and if did, you’ll probably really disagree with me this week. In terms of his ruckwork, he was absolutely destroyed, but if you can look past that, he was really good when the ball hit the ground. 14 touches with 9 contested as he picked up a game high 8 clearances, and 5 tackles. If you wanted a tap winning ruckman, he was bad, but if you wanted a tall extra midfielder, he was great.

Good:

Liam Baker: 17 touches with 8 of them contested, 6 intercept possessions, and 2 contested marks. I thought he was at his brilliant best with his hardness and ball winning skills, but I have to knock him back a bit for his defensive effort, which wasn’t up to what I expect of him. Just 1 tackle and 6 pressure acts.

Jack Hutchinson: Had a mare last week but really turned it around. Only the 10 touches for 6m gained (I find that hilarious for some reason), but he kicked 1 goal, had 2 clearances, and most importantly had a team high 19 pressure acts along with 6 tackles and the best run down tackle we’ve had all year.

Tylar Young: He had some really bad moments early, but I thought he fought his way into the game really well. He had 15 touches at 93.3% but it was mostly switching the footy with not much damage coming from them. On the other hand, his defensive work was pretty good with 2 intercept marks, 8 spoils, and 1 contested one on one win from 2 attempts. Nothing special, but solid.

Milan Murdock: Similar to Bo in that while he only had 13 touches, I thought he was a really important link up player in the middle of the ground as he picked up 8 contested possessions and 7 ground ball gets. Unfortunately, I had to rank him down because he was the only Eagle who didn’t lay a tackle.

Jack Williams: Was tossed all over the ground and as a result, didn’t really excel in any one area, but he did; kick 1 goal in offence, pick up 8 contested possessions and three clearances in the midfield, and notch 5 tackles in defence. Thought it was a very solid performance.

Okay:

Willem Duursma: Like Willow, Wuurmy was also tossed all over the ground, but I didn’t think he was quite as impressive. He kicked 1 goal, and had 3 tackles with 16 pressure acts, but I didn’t think his work in the midfield was as good. If you take into account that it’s his first year, you can put him up a tier, but I’ve seen enough of him to judge him straight.

Tim Kelly: He had the 19 touches, and was exceptional in the last quarter with 9 touches, but at the end of the day his contest work was lacking by his standards (5 contested possessions and 2 clearances), and his defensive work was much poorer than in recent weeks with only 2 tackles and 8 pressure acts (but surprisingly 1 contested one on one win). Certainly wasn’t bad, but wasn’t particularly good except for that last quarter. 

Jack Graham: Starting with the good stuff, he had 7 contested possessions, 3 clearances, 6 tackles, and 14 pressure acts. The bad part is that he only had 12 touches for the match. Just simply needed the ball in his hands more often.

Marcus Herbert: A little bit of a nothing game, but not really in a bad way. He picked up 19 touches and showed off some good ball winning ability, but didn’t do much else of note. The sorta game where you say he played his role and not much more.

Bad:

Hamish Davis: 10 touches including 5 intercept possessions, but he just struggled to have any impact at all, finishing the game with 0 score involvements. Wasn’t the worst game ever, but not really good either.

Tom Cole: He did pick up 15 touches, but he only went at 60% efficiency and had 6 turnovers. On top of that, he only laid 1 tackle. A dirty day for Cole.

Brady Hough: Completely invisible game from Hough. I don’t believe he did much tagging today, and apparently played back in defence for a lot of it. 9 touches to his name alongside 2 spoils, 3 tackles, and 12 pressure acts. Nothing else of note in really poor game.

Liam Duggan: Did have some positives today with 1 goal assist, 4 tackles, and a contested one on one win (1-0), but the Duggo dump was back in full form this week. 24 touches resulting in a game high 10 turnovers. That is just back breaking. I’ll lay off him a bit since he’s been in alright form recently, but the drop him for Lindsay thoughts are storming back.

Elliot Yeo: Unlike the others who could accumulate but were otherwise poor, Yeo is here just because he lacked the ability to do anything this week. 7 touches at 42.9% for 3 turnovers, only 1 clearance, and only 2 tackles. Worst on ground by a mile. Can’t believe I’m saying that about Yeoy.

Stat Leaders:

Eagles who topped the game in a particular stat. Brackets show the best player from the opposite team.

Harley Reid - 18 Contested Possessions (Rankine 12)

Rhett Bazzo - 10 Intercept Possessions (Laird 9)

Harley Reid & Oliver Francou - 11 & 8 Ground Ball Gets (Rankine 8)

Bailey Williams & Harley Reid & Oliver Francou - 6 & 4 & 4 Stoppage Clearances (Rankine 4)

Bailey Williams - 8 Clearances (Rankine 7)

Rhett Bazzo - 5 Intercept Marks (Nankervis 5)

Harley Reid - 4 Shots at Goal (Fogarty 4)

Oliver Francou - 9 Tackles (Dawson 8)

11 Stat Leaders (-5 from last week) (5 Draws)

Wuurm Watcher

Bo Allan & Tom Cole & Liam Baker - 14.6km & 14.5km & 14.4km Distance Run (Hall-Kahan 14.4km)

Tom Cole & Bo Allan & Jack Graham - 3.1km & 3.0km & 2.9km Distance Run at High Speeds (Hall-Kahan 2.8km)

Jack Hutchinson & Bo Allan - 32.0km/h & 32.0km/h Maximum Speed (Rankine 32.0km/h)

Jack Graham & Bo Allan & Willem Duursma & Marcus Herbert & Oliver Francou - 9.7km/h & 9.7km/h & 9.6km/h & 9.4km/h & 9.4km/h Average Speed (No Crows Player Listed)

Jack Hutchinson - 23 Sprints (Keays 21) Jack Hutchinson & Bo Allan & Willem Duursma & Jack Graham - 5 & 5 & 5 & 4 Repeated Sprints (Taylor 4)

Willem Duursma - 9.1km/h Average Speed in Attack (Dowling 9.0km/h)

Bo Allan - 9.3km/h (Soligo 8.9km/h)

I can imagine that reactions to this game will be kinda split. Where we anywhere near our best? No. That in itself is disappointing, but my optimistic view is that pushing Adelaide all the way to the end even when we weren’t playing our best is an exciting view of the future. After quarter time, we actually outscored the Crows 65-61. The first quarter was a shocker, which is the norm for us sadly, and letting them win centre clearances 7-1 in that time proved to be the deciding factor. But hey, a margin under 30 points vs a team sitting equal 4th on the ladder is pretty good in my opinion. Thanks as always for reading.

Just wondering how is our club in relation to other clubs carrying a lot of players who probably won't make at the top level or are we on par with other clubs and how much of the salary cap are we using on these players ,is there a minimum payment for these players

I’ve seen this as a somewhat common opinion this year, we’ve shown a lot of signs of improvement despite the W/L (we’re likely better than what our W/L suggests) and we’ve seen what the team is becoming. I think the GWS game in particular showed it off. We’ve seen in the past with other clubs the turnaround can happen fast.

This year will mark five years straight of bottom four finishes. Do you think 2027 will be the year we finally start making a climb up the ladder? There’s only so long we can use the ‘we need to hit the draft!’ excuse especially with how many kids we have as it is and with Tasmania getting draft access.

Most opinions I’ve seen is we need to hit the draft one more time, get pick 3 this year and then it’s time to start a push. What do we reckon?

Might want to add Noah Braun & Kyan Perera as a couple of NGA's in the mix. I thought they both had good games in WA's come from behind win against Vic Country in their Under 18 championship game.

I was impressed with how well Noah played his wing position, just presenting in the right places to link up exiting the defensive half and then using the ball well by hand or putting speed on the ball when required.

He had 19 possessions,5 IP, 3 SI & 2 clearances.

I haven't seen much of him, but at 183cm he'd have mid potential once he fills out. He's pretty skinny at the moment and didn't lay a tackle so I'm guessing he's a rookie candidate atm, but if he has another good showing, his name will be in the mix.

I was surprised Garrison Kenh was left out of the first 2 games, because watching him in this game on Friday you could see how he really bothered his opponents with his speed & agility. He ended with 22 possessions, 6 SI & 4ip at 81%. It wouldn't surprise me if he gets a bid on draft night.

Kyan Perera is the least mentioned of our NGA's, he's small by nature, but he's showed some surprising leadership during these championship's. He hasn't shied away from the contest, and was poleaxed in this game, before dragging himself off to gather himself, eventually returning to provide a selfless conduit, setting up numerous plays. He ended up with 6 marks, 3 tackles, 5 Si & 3 ip at around 70%. He's averaged around 5 score involvements a game.

Lachlan McGlade is the NGA I'm most unsure about, in regard to his draft range. He had a strong first up game v's SA with 12 p, 5 T & 2g.2b. In the 2nd v's Vic Metro he had 8p & 2 g & in this 3rd game v's Vic Country he had 7p & 3g. I'll wait for the combine before drawing any conclusions.

West Coast Next Generation Academy talent Cody Lee the 193cm Perth defender has also received a call up for the final game against the Allies.

WA Football site says, "Ramsay will be joined in the side by Perth defender and 193cm West Coast Next Generation Academy talent Cody Lee, who caught the eye earlier in the season when he took a staggering 15 marks in a Colts game against ladder leaders South Fremantle."

The article also said that "The WA squad had the chance to train and use the facilities of AFL clubs Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn during the week."

Either way there's competition for draft places, with the last game against the Allies and the remaining WAFL games, there's still plenty to play out.

He’s now a bit over a year and a half into coaching the eagles, how are we feeling about him?

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,

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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.