In the bright and beautiful year of 1986, the VFL granted WA their first license to their very own football team. That’s when the West Coast Eagles were born. The city of Perth was ecstatic, the people were vibrant with genuine passion and joy. The West had gotten their wish and were ready to face the challenge of the newly rebranded AFL. Through their formative years, the Eagles found satisfaction in the small wins, making the finals in their first 2 years playing in the league plus a consistent outing for the next couple, eventually ending on top of the ladder in 1991. Considering they were an extremely fresh team, playing for less than 5 years at that point, it only made sense that the AFL needed to improve their expansion plans to become the league we all know and love today. That’s exactly what they did. In 1994 the license for a 2nd WA team was given and in 1995 the Fremantle Dockers made their season debut in the first ever western derby. I’m not going to sugar coat this, but it was a blow out, the experienced Eagles side was way to strong for the young Freo team. Although this doesn’t come to much surprise as Fremantle’s initial purpose was to weaken West Coast and their premiership efforts. But that begs the question, if their initial role was to weaken the Eagles, how come it has taken so long to find success of their own? Is this a failed experiment, or a genius stroke of art for the story of the AFL.

Since 1995, the Dockers have only seen finals footy 3 times in their history and only making one grand final in 2013 and failing. The eagles on the other hand have been to the grand final 6 times and have won 4 times out of them. So where did it all go wrong for the Dockers. Their efforts to weaken the Eagles clearly didn’t go to plan, and having their own sustained success has been nothing but desire. Fremantle have been building a lot over the past 10 years to bring them back to the premiership contending team they were in 2013. With consistently rebuilding the entire list to fit the play style of the modern game, and talent getting younger and younger it was crucial that they drafted well and maintained a rich amount of youth in their squad. They saw glimpses of the future in season 2022 taking the 5th spot on the ladder and making finals for the first time in 7 years. But can they capitalise. Can they take their window of opportunity and seize it to become part of the first group to win the club a flag. So, to answer the question, are they a failed experiment or not. I say they are not. They’ve been building and building and slowly creating a strong following and a winning atmosphere. All I can do now is only sit back and watch…