Little Bloke, Big Future: Eagles Lock In Their Livewire Small Forward
Another one locked away, another story that’ll get about four paragraphs on the big eastern states sites before they get back to talking about whoever’s premiership fancy is sneezing at training. West Coast have handed our speedy small forward a contract extension, and honestly, over here in the west, this is exactly the sort of news that gets the floggers excited even if it never trends on the telly.
Why this bloke matters more than the headline suggests
Small forwards don’t get the Brownlow votes and they don’t get the back page unless they’ve kicked six in a final. But any Eagles fan who’s sat through the last few years knows that pressure forwards are the engine room of a team that wants to actually compete, not just make up the numbers inside 50. This kid – and I say kid loosely because he’s been around long enough to know the system back to front – brings an energy that you can’t coach into blokes. You’ve either got that burst or you haven’t, and he’s got buckets of it.
He’s the sort of player who chases down a wayward kick-in, smothers it, and suddenly the whole ground lifts. Crowd noise goes up, teammates find an extra yard, opposition defenders start second-guessing themselves. That’s not something that shows up neatly in the stats column, but ask any coach in the comp and they’ll tell you pressure forwards win you games you’ve got no right winning.
The travel factor nobody east of the border wants to talk about
Every single year we cop it from commentators who’ve never had to fly four hours for a Thursday night game and then back again for a Monday recovery session. West Coast and Fremantle both deal with a travel schedule that would flatten most teams, and yet somehow we’re still expected to turn up full of running in the last quarter against sides who’ve had a twenty minute bus trip to the ground. So when a player commits his future to a club that asks that much of him, physically and mentally, it means something. This bloke could’ve easily used his form as leverage to angle for a move back east, closer to family, closer to the cameras. Instead he’s stuck solid with the boys in blue and gold.
What the deal actually says about list management
Give credit where it’s due – the list management crew at the Eagles have had a rough trot being judged on win-loss columns the last couple of seasons, but quietly they’ve been doing the unglamorous stuff right. Re-signing a proven small forward before he even hits restricted free agency territory is smart business. It locks in certainty, it keeps the rest of the market guessing, and it sends a message to the rest of the list that the club backs its own rather than chasing shiny names from interstate every trade period.
There’s also a succession planning element here that doesn’t get talked about enough. We all know what happens when a club lets its small forward stocks run dry – you end up shuffling undersized mids forward and hoping for the best, and it never really works. Having this fella signed on gives the development blokes time to bring the next crop through without the panic of needing someone to fill a specific role overnight.
The numbers back up the eye test
If you actually sit down and watch him rather than just skim his disposal count, you’ll notice the tackles inside 50, the defensive pressure acts, the way he reads a crumbing contest two seconds before anyone else on the ground. Those intangibles are exactly why clubs lock blokes like this in rather than letting the manager shop him around in October. He’s not going to win a Coleman medal and he’s probably never going to be All-Australian, but he’s the type of player that makes the bloke kicking the Coleman medal’s job easier by dragging a defender out of position every single time he leads.
You don’t always notice him until he’s not there – and then suddenly your forward line looks a yard slower and a lot less dangerous.
What it means for the rest of the list
This sort of extention sends ripples through a list beyond just the bloke who signed it. Younger small forwards coming through the system now have a genuine benchmark to aim for, and it shows the pathway from the WAFL or interstate recruitment all the way up actually works if you put the effort in. It’s also a reminder for the rest of the playing group that loyalty still gets rewarded at this club, even in an era where everyone seems to be chasing the next move before they’ve even settled into the current one.
And let’s be fair dinkum, in a competition where every club is fighting for scraps of attention against the Victorian clubs who seem to get three times the coverage for doing a third of the winning, keeping your own talent matters even more. We don’t have the luxury of being the default story every single week. When West Coast do something smart, it needs to actually register, not get buried under another AFL Media piece about some Victorian club’s new training top.
The bigger picture for West Coast’s rebuild
Nobody’s pretending one small forward signing turns the ship around overnight. The Eagles have got real work to do in plenty of areas, and anyone telling you otherwise is either not watching the footy or has rose coloured glasses glued on. But building blocks matter, and keeping genuine quality depth pieces locked in while the bigger names and higher draft picks develop is exactly the sort of patient, unflashy work that eventually turns into finals footy again.
It won’t make the back page of the papers over east, and it probably won’t rate a mention on the big Melbourne-based footy shows beyond a quick crosser. But for those of us who actually watch every minute of every game over here in the west, this is a genuinely good news story. He stays, the pressure stays, the energy stays, and the kids coming through get a proper standard to chase.
Final word
Give it time and this bloke’s name will come up in trivia nights as one of those
