Mornings with Mark Duffield FULL SHOW!!! 27.07.2026

**Mark Duffield** (0:11)
This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SEMWA.

**Mark Duffield** (0:17)
Hello everybody, welcome to the SEMWA Radio Studio. We're out here at Optus Stadium. It is a Monday morning in Perth. It's 12.4 degrees outside at the moment. We're here, thanks to Beaumont Homes, award-winning design built to be loved forever. And it's going to be partly cloudy in Perth today, building to a top of 19 degrees. Made in WA, for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SEMWA. So a couple of things to come out of Friday night's Western Derby. Let's start on Fremantle. We find themselves three games and a lot of percentage clear of the second place Swans with four weeks remaining. So that means it's going to take something significant to shift them from top spot and it would take something nothing short of calamitous to see them miss the top two, which is really the important slot for a WA team trying to take a significant shot at a Premiership. That is what they had to do against West Coast and they were emphatic after half time when they turned a narrow lead into a 12 goal win. So let's look at the to do list for Freemantle between now and the first week of finals. It has to be to get games into Hayden Young and Touchwood keep him fit. To manage the game time of Luke Jackson as much as they can. The Ruckman is emphatic about his wish to keep playing. So as much as possible manage his minutes and he did play a little less game time against West Coast. That will allow the Dockers to also make better judgments on his preferred backup. So Mason Cox was pretty steady at the weekend. Kicked a good goal. Sean Darcy still waiting in the wings. He had 23 disposals with 39 hit outs in Peel's win over Subieko in the WAFL. I do wonder if at some point between now and the end of the home and away season, whether Justin Longmuir will throttle right back on Jackson's midfield minutes, throw Darcy in there almost as the primary Ruckman for a week and see what he can do. That might just be an idea. I've got another idea and this one for the All-Australian Selectors. I think Murphy Reid has to be in the team now.
He was very, very good in the derby again. You can argue as to whether he should have got the Glenn Dinning Allen medal or not, but he was certainly very influential. That's the way he's been for much of his nearly two seasons in the AFL. Good things happen for freeman or when Murphy Reid gets the ball, and he's doing it in a team that is playing games that matter every week.
On West Coast, it feels like every week we're talking about the Eagles as a team being hurt by their own skill execution. While they've made ground this year, you can only keep hanging your hat on that for so long. I still think Andrew McWalder is doing a good job, but I also think his next challenge is to put it to the skill blunderers in his team that they either have to shift their level of skill execution or he's going to shift them out of the team. The number of times the Eagles are in a position to hurt an opponent or attack on counter-attack and they end up coughing the ball up for no good reason, and in a position that allows the opponent to hurt them.
That must be driving their supporters mad. It would also be driving their forwards mad. If you have Jake Waderman and Job Shanahan ahead of the ball, who are both potent and dangerous, often the Eagles are going wider than what is ideal to get the ball to them, because they are trying to protect themselves against the potential damage from their own turnovers. I'd love to see McWalter get Josh Lindsay back in the team and back into the back line to get another ball user and decision maker back in there. Now, I know you need experience, and Lindsay won't necessarily nail everything from the word go, but we all know that assertive ball use is going to be one of the main things he brings to the team. So you might as well get as many games into him as you possibly can this year. And it would be good to see Cooper Duff Titler back in the team before the end of the year as well. He had 18 disposals and kicked four goals in the win over West Perth at the weekend. Jack Williams kicked two goals from seven disposals as ruck back up in the AFL, supporting his namesake Bailey Williams. So he'd probably be a tad unlucky to make way this week. But Duff Titler and West Coast will both benefit if he adds more games before the end of his debut season.