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WAFC chief executive Michael Roberts says West Coast remaining in the WAFL is best for player development and competition.
In January, recently appointed Eagles chief executive Don Pyke was given until June to decide whether they will continue to field a reserves side in the WAFL or if they will move to the VFL.
This comes after Port Adelaide announced they would apply for a licence to compete in the Victorian-based league. It went national in 2021, with Gold Coast, Brisbane, GWS and Sydney‘s reserve sides joining the competition.
Recently, West Coast has committed to a rebuild, recruiting plenty of young talent onto their list. With an average age of 23.9 years old, it is ranked as the third youngest AFL side.
Roberts told Sports Breakfast the best place for West Coast to field its reserves side was the WAFL citing player development and competition as drawcards.
“It's really difficult to measure because the last couple of years they've just been and so hamstrung by hamstrings effectively,” he said.
“You don't want your players, and I think either of the AFL clubs want their players travelling. They hate the fact that they have to play eleven away games effectively, so to have your younger players who are developing jump on a plane every second week as well I think that that's not great for their development.
“I also think you know you can pay some respect to the standard of the WAFL competition, it's a fantastic competition that provides young players with a great standard of football.
“There's some great older players that come back from AFL. I think absolutely West Coast ever have a position and I think it's the best thing for West Coast players as well.”
Recently, West Coast has committed to a rebuild, recruiting plenty of young talent onto their list
In 2019, West Coast’s WAFL side saw success, finishing fourth and making finals. Since 2021, they have finished last largely due to the AFL side being decimated by Injury. In 2023, it recorded five losses of over 100 points.
West Coast’s 19-game losing streak came to an end in round 13 after drawing against Perth.
Roberts believes allowing West Coast to recruit will balance out the competition again.
“We talk about competitive balance and making sure that all fans can go to a game and expect that they're going to see a good contest and the clubs that they support will have a genuine chance to make finals,” he said.
“When you don't have competitive balance measures like a draft like the AFL have, you have to tweak it year on year and West Coast in particular, it's really hard to measure. We've spoken about it a lot, but how do you set rules for a team and then they're decimated by injuries so the rules really don't impact it or have their true run?
"We've tinkered with it again, given them some more opportunities to recruit and recruit at a higher level.
“It's not good seeing a few injured already, but we're still from our season, we're still about six, seven weeks away. Hopefully, they get full strength and they can be really competitive and add to what we saw last year, which was a really even competition.”
In the off-season, West Coast recruited former AFL players Trey Ruscoe and Jason Gillbee to the side, bolstering their stocks.
Ahead of the 2024 season, Roberts says more WAFL games are a work in progress for the future, but once again, is looking to maintain a competitive balance.
“I'll go back to that term, competitive balance. At the moment, it's even - every club plays each other twice, and that's what we're stuck with,” he said.
“If we were to add matches, that's when you start to lose the balance or the perceived evenness. So that's what we're discussing with clubs at the moment moving forward. Could we use the fixture to actually add more balance to the competition?”
“I think we pushed it forward or we proposed it last season or season before and at that time, the clubs were pretty resistant to that, So we didn't push ahead with it, but I think it's something that we need to talk about moving forward.”
IMAGE: The West Australian