Deadline Day Madness: Eagles Cash In While Roos Cop It Again

Righto, settle in, because that last hour of trade period was an absolute circus and for once us lot over here in the west weren’t just watching the chaos from the cheap seats – we were actually in the thick of it. Six blokes swapped guernseys before the clock ran down, the Eagles walked away smiling, and somewhere in Adelaide one poor Crow is sitting by the phone that never rang.

The final hour from the Eagles’ lounge room

I don’t know about you but I reckon deadline day should come with a warning label. You’ve got list managers chucking numbers around like it’s a servo pie night raffle, phones running hot, and every man and his kelpie on Twitter reckons they’ve got the inside word on what’s happening. Over here in the west we’re usually three hours behind the drama given the time difference, so half of us were still having breaky when the real madness kicked off eastern time.

But fair play to our footy department – they didn’t sit on their hands. While the usual east-coast glamour clubs were doing their big flashy swaps for the cameras, West Coast quietly got done what needed doing. No fuss, no dramas, just business. That’s the way I like it. We’ve had enough drama the last few seasons without needing more of it in the trade room.

Why this one actually mattered for us

Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend every trade period move is a masterstroke, because footy history is littered with deals that looked ripper on paper and turned into absolute shockers two years down the track. But this deadline day felt different for the Eagles. We’ve been crying out for depth and a bit of experience through the midfield corridor for what feels like forever, and the moves that got done in that last frantic hour start to address that.

The Demons and the Bombers were the big storylines nationally, no doubt about it, each ticking off multiple deals as the clock wound down, and good luck to them. But don’t let the noise from Melbourne drown out what our list management mob managed to sort out. It wasn’t flashy, it wasn’t front page of the back page, but it was exactly what this footy club needed.

• Depth through the midfield rotation, which we’ve needed since, honestly, forever
• A bit more experience on a list that’s been leaning heavy on kids
• No giving up future first-round draft capital for the sake of a headline

Spare a thought for the stranded Crow

Now look, I’m not here to kick a bloke while he’s down, because trade period can be an absolute gut-punch for a player who’s put his hand up and asked for a move, only for the whole thing to fall over in the last twenty minutes. One unlucky Crow found himself the last man standing with no seat when the music stopped, and that’s a rough spot to be in professionally and personally. Footy clubs talk a big game about duty of care and I reckon this is exactly the kind of situation where it actually gets tested – how do you manage a bloke who’s effectively put his hand up to leave, then has to rock back up to pre-season training at the same club?

It happens most years to someone, and it’s never pretty. You’d like to think the clubs involved handle it with a bit of humanity rather than just shrugging and moving on to next year’s draft hub. Fingers crossed for the fella, whoever ends up wearing the guernsey come round one – he deserves a fair crack regardless of how the last hour of October played out.

The Roos get left holding nothing, again

Can we talk about North Melbourne for a sec? Because it feels like every single trade period the Roos end up either giving away good young talent for bargain prices or missing out on the player they actually wanted while everyone else does their business around them. This year was no different – while the Dees, Dons and Eagles were all ticking off deals in that mad final hour, North were reportedly in the mix for at least one of the moves and came away with nothing to show for it.

I feel for Roos supporters, I genuinely do, because it’s become a running joke at this point. You’d reckon at some stage their list management would crack the code and actually land what they’re chasing instead of being the club everyone else uses as leverage. Maybe it’s tactics, maybe it’s just bad luck, but either way it’s becoming a pattern that their fans have every right to be filthy about.

What it all means heading into the pre-season

So where does this leave the competition? The Dees and Dons both clearly fancy themselves as genuine flag contenders again and they’ve shuffled their lists accordingly, which fair enough, that’s what big clubs with finals aspirations are supposed to do. Credit where it’s due – both clubs went about their business efficiently and didn’t muck around.

For the Eagles though, I reckon this trade period should be judged less on splash and more on substance. We’re not buying flags in October, we’re building depth and competitiion for spots, which is exactly where a rebuilding list should be focused. It’s not going to get the Fox Footy panel excited and it’s certainly not going to get the same wall-to-wall coverage that the eastern states clubs cop for every minor deal, but that’s the usual story for us out here anyway. We’re used to doing our best work without anyone much watching.

The bigger picture on bias

And look, I’ll have my little whinge because I always do – the coverage of this whole trade period again leaned heavily towards what Victorian clubs were up to, with West Coast and Fremantle moves getting a line or two buried down the bottom of the article. Same old story. Doesn’t matter what we do over here, it’s never quite as newsworthy as what happens in the Melbourne bubble. But we don’t need the validation, we know what we got done and why it matters for next season.

All up, a genuinely dramatic finish to trade period, some clubs walking away rapt, one Crow left out in the cold, and the Roos once again left to rue what might have been. From the west, we’ll take our quiet, sensible business any day of the week.