No West Coast, you shouldn’t get a priority pick.

No West Coast, you shouldn’t get a priority pick.

GuyWhoLikesSport

West Coast has historically been a powerhouse club. This is the worst that they have ever been, and likely will ever be.

Watching them over the past few years has been equal parts funny and sad, like watching Uncle Junior gradually lose it over the last few seasons of The Sopranos.

However, after losing by 76 points to a team that was being autopsied after round 1, it’s starting to get to the point where every game is like watching the final conversation between Uncle Junior and Tony.

To illustrate just how bad they are, per Dan Cherny that 76-point loss is not one of the 10 heaviest defeats they have suffered since 2022.

Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it.

They’re just making Tommy Wiseau’s The Room every week, except every time it somehow gets worse.

Given how historically awful they are, it’s worth asking whether it’s time to give them a priority pick.

There have been a few rule changes to the priority pick system in recent years. The current “system”, where the AFL just gets to decide of its own volition with a nebulous formula that is impossible to follow and has not been publicised, has been in place since 2006. This is also known as the holding the ball approach to priority picks, where not much is known about how it’s awarded, just that it occasionally is.

Since 2006 only Brisbane in 2016, Gold Coast in 2019, and North Melbourne in 2023 have received priority picks and other general draft concessions.

The Lions got one second round pick after they experienced a mass exodus of talent over the preceding three years and were one of the worst non-expansion teams in recent memory (non North/West Coast edition). They were awarded the pick after hiring Chris Fagan.

Gold Coast got the most generous package. receiving pick #1 to give them the top 2 picks in the 2019 draft and pick 20 in 2019. Additionally, Gold Coast got a mid-first round pick in 2020 as well as pre-draft picks and the first pick of the second round in 2021.

Gold Coast’s package came after an entire history of futility that makes the Haas Formula 1 team look like a juggernaut. Like Brisbane, they had also just made a change at coach hiring Stuart Dew after the Rodney Eade experience went belly-up.

Finally, we have North Melbourne who got pick 19 in 2023, as well as two extra picks in 2024 which are to be taken at the end of the first round after failing to finish better than second bottom in the four seasons prior to receiving the picks.

Like those other teams, just prior to getting their priority picks, North also appointed a new coach prior to receiving their shiny new picks – Alastair Clarkson. Ever heard of him?

West Coast’s futility is most comparable to Gold Coast and North Melbourne on the field, but what about off it?

Here are where the issues lie.

Giving West Coast priority picks is like Obama bailing out the banks in the GFC. It’s like renewing Crown’s gambling license. It’s like rich people getting free stuff.

You’re propping up the house.

In the AFL’s 2023 funding ladder, a pretty good indicator of who the financial power clubs are and aren’t, Gold Coast was tied for the most funding while North Melbourne and Brisbane were tied for the second most.

West Coast were equal bottom.

This club is based in one of the wealthiest states on earth, and propped up by the country’s strongest economy.

In the history of priority picks, even apart from the system changes, the wealthiest clubs to ever receive high-end priority picks are Carlton and Collingwood in 2005 who received picks 1 and 2 respectively.

Those clubs had mafia money backing them up.

West Coast has mining money.

It’s The Godfather 1 where Don Vito is talking to the heads of the 5 families,

versus The Godfather 2 where Michael Corleone is talking with captains of industry and government delegates.

We’re operating in a different world here.

Getting past my inherent lack of desire to not make football echo what happens in the real world, where the already advantaged get handed even more advantages, has West Coast even tried to get better?

In 2020, West Coast cracked the sads because they were treated like everyone else and had to go into the hub, and they have been awful since.

Since 2021, their ladder positions have gone 9th, 17th, 18th and this season they are 18th again through three games with a percentage of 42.8.

Only this season have they finally started to play some kids, instead of trotting an uninterested Andrew Gaff out every week like it’s 2019 (whom they did trot out in round 1 for 4 disposals).

Despite a downward slide that started largely when their head coach started bitching to a sport league about a pandemic, they have made no changes at the top.

How does Adam Simpson have a job at this point?

He seems like a nice fella but he’s the Michael Jordan of doing nothing to keep his job and keeping it anyway. He didn’t even seem that interested in coaching at the end of last year but the Board “unanimously agreed” to keep him on.

 

Why?

I guess after a season where you lose 5 games by more than 100 points, one by 171, you have to hold onto the coach.

Did they keep him because of money? If so, pardon my French but cry me a fucking river. The soft cap implications won’t be relevant when you’re finally good under a new coach in 5 years.

This is not a 2-year turnaround.

As I have already pointed out, every other club that got a priority pick made the obvious decision to try a new voice at the top.

It smacks of ego above all else, and is endemic of the kind of idle rich, “everything will work out for us because we’re West Coast” that seems to pervade that club.

While they’ve been bad, they haven’t done enough to show any interest in actually winning football games to get a priority pick.

 

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