Lock Him Up: Eagles Show Faith With Young Gun’s New Deal
Good news out of Lathlain this week, footy fans, with West Coast confirming they’ve tied down one of their shiny young first-year types to a fresh deal. Didn’t take long, did it. One decent season in the brown and blue and the club’s already queuing up to make sure some east-coast outfit doesn’t come sniffing in a year or two.
And fair enough too. Over here in the west we’ve watched this kid take to AFL footy like he’s been doing it for years, not months. The composure, the footy smarts, the way he just looks like he belongs out there already – that’s not something you see every pre-season. Give credit where it’s due, the recruiting and development staff have clearly done their homework on this one.
Why Lock Him In Now
Some fans will ask why the rush. Why not wait, see how year two pans out, make him sweat on it a bit? Honestly, that’s old-school thinking and it gets clubs burned. We’ve all watched promising types get a taste of senior footy, have one good year, and suddenly every list manager in the country is ringing their manager wanting a chat. Locking blokes in early isn’t panic, it’s just smart business.
West Coast have been through enough of that pain already, if we’re honest. We don’t need to list the departures over the years, we all remember them, and every single time the commentary from the eastern states made it sound like players were desperate to escape the west. Nah. Mostly it’s about opportunity, about timing, about a club actually putting pen to paper before the circus starts. This is the club getting ahead of it for once.
The Bigger Picture For The Rebuild
Let’s not pretend West Coast are flying right now on the ladder. We know where we’ve been sitting the last couple of seasons and nobody over here is sugar-coating it. But rebuilds aren’t measured in wins and losses in year one or two, they’re measured in whether you’re actually building something. Extending a promising kid before he’s even hit restricted free agency territory is exactly the kind of signal a footy club needs to send, both to its own fans and to the next batch of draftees thinking about where they want to spend their career.
It tells every other young fella on the list: perform and we’ll look after you. It tells the footy world West Coast isn’t just a stopover for blokes waiting out their contract before heading home to Victoria or wherever. That reputation has hurt us in recruiting battles before, no point denying it, so moves like this chip away at it bit by bit.
The Travel Factor Nobody Talks About
Can we please, for the thousandth time, bring up the travel. West Australian clubs cop criticism from commentators who’ve never had to do a five hour flight home after a night game, landed at 2am, and fronted for recovery the next morning like it’s nothing. This kid has handled his first season doing exactly that, backing up interstate trip after interstate trip, and still found a way to improve week on week. That’s a genuine achievement that barely rates a mention outside WA because it doesn’t fit the easy narrative.
Eastern states commentary loves to focus on the glamour clubs, the Victorian derbies, the stuff that gets the Friday night slot. Meanwhile our young blokes are quietly adjusting to a travel schedule that would wreck plenty of established senior players, let alone a first-year kid still learning the game at the top level. Worth remembering next time some bloke on the telly reckons WA footy is an afterthought.
What This Means For The Rest Of The List
There’s a flow-on effect here too. Other young blokes on the list, the ones a year or two off debuting, will see this and know the pathway’s real. It’s not just lip service from the club about development, there’s an actual trak record forming now of West Coast backing in talent early rather than waiting until they’re forced to by looming free agency.
It also takes a bit of pressure off the list management team heading into trade period. One less contract to stress about, one less storyline for the keyboard warriors to beat up into some big drama about discontent at the club. We’ve had enough manufactured headlines over the years, so any extension that gets ticked off quietly and sensibly is a win in my book.
A Word On Expectations
Now, I’m not going to sit here and anoint this kid the next best thing since sliced bread, because that’s exactly the trap we fall into with every promising first-year player and it rarely helps them. One good season is one good season. There’ll be bumps, there’ll be a sophomore slump moment probably, there’ll be a week where the opposition figures him out and he has to adjust. That’s footy. What matters is the club has shown patience and backed its judgement, and that’s a much healthier approach than the alternative of waiting nervously every trade period wondering if he’s going to walk.
Clubs that build trust with their young talent early tend to get loyalty back further down the track – it’s not rocket science, it’s just decent man-management.
So chalk this one up as a genuinely good news story for a club that hasn’t had a heap of them lately on the field. Off field, the recruiting and retention side of things is actually looking pretty sharp, and that’s worth celebrating even if the ladder position isn’t.
The Bottom Line
Over here in the west we take these wins where we can get them. A contract extension for a promising kid isn’t going to get the back page in Melbourne, it won’t trend nationally, and some commentator somewhere will probably barely mention it between segments on whichever Victorian club had a minor injury scare. That’s fine. We know what we’ve got, we know what we’re building, and we’ll keep doing it our way, travel schedule and all.
Here’s hoping this is the first of a few similar announcements before the off-season’s out. Keep the good ones, keep building, and eventually the rest of the competition will stop underestimating what’s happening over here.
