Mark Duffield - The Editorial (04.08.2026)

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**Mark Duffield** (0:58)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the SENWA radio studio. We're out here at a very busy Optus Stadium this Tuesday morning in Perth as they get ready for soccer tomorrow night. We are here thanks to Beaumont Homes, award-winning design, built to be loved forever. Going to be partly sunny, but also some showers in Perth today, a top of 19 degrees made in WA for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.
And West Coast supporters, I reckon it's a good time to step back and take a deep breath. So the loss to fellow seller Dweller Richmond, the second such loss this year by the same margin, has you asking the question, has the team improved at all? And then the follow-up question, is Andrew McWalter the right person to take the club forward? And on the first question, yes, you have clearly improved this year. And on the second question, just wait another year, and then a clearer picture will emerge on whether Andrew McWalter can progress the team and get it back into finals contention or whether another coaching change should be considered. Now, there was talk of extending McWalter's contract a few weeks ago. It wasn't valid then, and it certainly isn't valid now. He's not a coach in demand, so just let the contract run its course.
But the talk of sacking the coach now is equally invalid. The coach's job is to improve the team relative to the competition, and that improvement has occurred this year. It might not have happened as fast as West Coast supporters would have liked, but step back and look at the objective data. The improvement is there. The Eagles won one game last year. They lost 12 games by 40 points or more, seven games by 60 points or more. That was the very definition of uncompetitive. The Eagles have had four wins so far this year, seven losses by 40 points or more, just three losses of 10 goals or more. Yes, there are three games to go, which might change those figures. But no matter how the Eagles go in those games, the overall picture is going to look better at the end of 2026 than it did the previous year.
In narrow losses to the Western Bulldogs, Port Adelaide, North Melbourne, and Richmond, inaccurate kicking was a major factor in the outcome, and inaccurate kicking is fixable. The main culprit in all of this has been identified as Jake Waterman. He kicked two goals six against the Tigers at the weekend. He has 43.5 for the year so far.
So the question you have to ask about this is this one. For Jake, are the Yips a pattern, or has this year been an anomaly? And the answer to that question is that in nine seasons in the AFL, this is the first season in which Waterman has kicked more behind than goals. In his breakout season in 2024, when he earned an All Australian jumper, Waterman kicked 53.23 to be one of the most reliable shots on goal in the competition. So if you factor that in and you anticipate that Waterman will do the work on his technique and get the right guidance to clear his head, which is clearly cluttered and full of self-doubt at the moment, you have to believe that he will get past this and become reliable in front of goal again.
So if you're an Eagles fan, at least give Waterman the chance to make that happen, and at least give McWalter the chance to help him to make that happen. As raw as things might be for Eagles fans in the wake of the loss to Richmond, the loss happened because of one thing, poor kicking for goal. And while McWalter has a role to play in helping his players fix that, I would suggest that is not his major task between now and round one next season. The task for McWalter is to work out which players in West Coast top 30 are not playing at a level which is commensurate with team success in the AFL. And then the tough question which follows that, which of those players can shift their levels to reach the required standard, and which ones the club has to move past. And that has to be reflected in the team selection in the last three games. The list management at the end of the season and the way the club attacks the preseason. West Coast at this point, I would argue have five youngsters who have shown the potential to become genuine A-grade talent in the AFL. And those players are Harley Reid, Willem Dersma, Job Shanahan, Ruben Jinby, and Cooper Duff-Titler. I would also argue they need to find at least two more, which means they need to go back to the draft again this year. And they need to get their first pick at the very least, absolutely right.