This wasn’t supposed to happen to the West Coast Eagles.
They are among the wealthiest clubs in Australia, the second-most successful team in the AFL era with four flags and a plethora of riches on and off the park.
Yet with one win for the season, a percentage of just 47.3 and coming off the back of a club-worst 171-point loss to the Sydney Swans on Saturday — the Eagles are now a laughing stock, and the value of that stock is tumbling.
The result was so bad chairman Paul Fitzpatrick wrote to supporters — never a good sign — labelling the loss as “unacceptable” and “one of the darkest days” in the club’s history.
“We know our members and fans are hurting and so is everyone inside the football club,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
“We all take a degree of responsibility for where we sit currently and equally we are all committed to fighting our way through this situation.”
Skipper Luke Shuey described Saturday’s result as “shocking”, and said the review of the game was a “bit more brutal than weeks gone by”.
“As it should be, let a team kick 200 points, there’s not a lot of positive to come out of that,” he said.
At the moment West Coast resemble the deplorable Melbourne sides of a decade ago. Only worse.
So is the club just one more flogging away from sacking the coach or chief executive?
The Eagles have seen dark days before, but have never sacked a coach mid-season.
Their one-goal effort against Essendon at Windy Hill in 1989 was low, but cushioned by the fact it was only their third season.
There were the Ken Judge days in 2000 and 2001.
Then the wilderness of 2008-2010, when in trying to bury the party-boy ghosts of Cousins and Gardiner, the club forgot how to play.
This weekend set a new benchmark for how bad things can get.
This is the lowest ebb. The injuries, the lack of fight, the massive margins.
It is not what a fan base spoiled by decades of success is used to.
Where it went wrong
The Eagles secured their fourth premiership in 2018, and in many ways it was their most unlikely.
It was a flag pinched in the middle of a Richmond dynasty.
Heading into season 2019, Eagles fans were hopeful of a dynasty of their own.
The list still looked primed for contention, and there were moves behind the scenes to bring in gun midfielder Tim Kelly from Geelong.
Then it all went off the rails.
The rot set in around the time Willie Rioli tampered with a urine sample in late 2019.
A day after the Rioli news broke, the shell-shocked club dropped a semi-final to Geelong.
The next year they trudged off to a COVID hub in Queensland like sullen teenagers told they were grounded.
An arrogance had breached the walls and cracks were appearing.
Their first game in the hub against Gold Coast was one a focused Eagles side should have waltzed in. They were destroyed.
Coach Simpson was out of answers.
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said after the game, as shown in the documentary Making Their Mark. “F**king big heads.”
The Eagles rebounded once they got back to Perth and still managed to win a final, but the premiership window had blown shut so softly most supporters didn’t hear it.
From bad to much, much worse
The club lurched through a 2021 season where its good was passable, but its worst was deplorable.
The club lost seven out of its last nine games, missing the finals for the first time since 2014.
But that season seems positively idyllic compared to what has happened since.
After their list was decimated by COVID before the start of last year, they managed just two wins all season.
And after plenty of positivity pre-season, so far 2023 has been even worse.
A first-up loss to North Melbourne was followed by a win against GWS before disaster struck against Fremantle.
After looking good for the first quarter, Shuey grasped at his hamstring and from there it was one disaster after another.
West Coast lost six players to injury that day, and hasn’t won since.
Bad luck or bad management?
So what happens from here?
All signs publicly state that the Eagles are prepared to “stay the course” with Simpson, and their chief executive Trevor Nisbett.
Both men, as the club’s figureheads, have been in the crosshairs after the deplorable run the Eagles have endured.
But how much of the club’s current woes are due to bad luck, and how much bad management?
The Eagles have always been the piranhas in the peculiar fishbowl that is Perth sport, and the local media and talkback lines are in a frenzy with speculation about the future of each.
Inaugural Eagles coach Ron Alexander does not think sacking Simpson is the answer, after describing the club’s weekend loss to Sydney as “rock bottom”.
“With Adam Simpson, I’d certainly keep him on, but I’d make his main mission building the club now,” Alexander said.
“He’s actually got to get out and about and around and have a look at where the best young talent is, and he’s really got to lead the charge in that.”
Shuey described Simpson as a “terrific leader”.
“He puts others first, he cares about us as players, he cares about the footy club, he cares about our fans,” Shuey said.
“He’s doing it tough like we all are, but he’s so committed to the cause.”
Alexander said depth was an issue for the club, and Simpson admitted he only had 29 players to choose from on the weekend.
Most clubs would struggle to be competitive while missing so much talent.
As the Eagles and their supporters endure this winter of discontent, thoughts inevitably turn to just how long this giant of a club will stay down.
In a competition designed to be equal, the Eagles are outliers.
Any club is only ever 57 years away from being St Kilda, a premiership drought that for supporters must feel like it will never end.
Will the Eagles’ current woes damage the fabric of the club, shifting the balance of power in WA football?
Or will time and equalisation heal all wounds?
The next few years promise to be an interesting time for West Australian footy.
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