With the 2022 AFL season complete, Kane Cornes and Garry Lyon have gone through all 18 clubs and come up with burning questions for each.
West Coast finished 17th in 2022, tumbling down the ladder after only managing to scrape together two wins for the entire season.
Lyon asks why is West Coast so passive?
“Why are they being so passive in the past couple of seasons and why are we as the footy public being so accepting of where they find themselves,” Lyon told SEN Breakfast.
They’re probably the most financially secure football club in the whole damn competition yet it would appear… they haven’t been overly active,” he said.
“How does a premiership coach… how would he be accepting of non-satisfactory standards?”
Kane Cornes responded strongly to Lyon, stating the Eagles are currently “in denial”.
“Can you imagine the last two years if that was Essendon or St Kilda or Collingwood, how we would be talking about West Coast,” he said.
I believe they’re in denial, they put their hand up for Luke Jackson, they had no chance of getting Luke Jackson, can you imagine West Coast four years ago being zero chance to get Luke Jackson?
“They presented to him, they sat him down mid-year and Luke has gone ‘no I’m going to Fremantle,’ this is the marquee free agent on the market, West Australian boy, and he’s gone for Fremantle over West Coast.
“They’re really sensitive in talking about standards, they have allowed their players to get away with far too much and they continue to deny that.
“They play a boring game style, they have gifted contracts to players that don’t deserve them, and I don’t see an easy way out for them because they have neglected the talent in the draft.
“Play with a bit more flair, you want to go and watch West Coast, you haven’t wanted to watch them in the last couple of years.
“You can look at the way that the players present themselves, yes there’s some luck with injuries but there’s also a fair amount of preparation, you continually get injured, you’ve got to look at your preparation of the players and how you’ve prepared them, I think there’s some responsibility on Adam (Simpson).
“They would use the COVID stuff as an excuse, which for a brief period was probably fair, but the one thing they need to get back to is being an elite football club and an elite environment.”