The Ageless Eagles Are A Terrifying Force Once Again

In the first dozen seconds of their thrilling win over Geelong, the West Coast Eagles foreshadowed what was going to be the difference between the two sides.

From the centre bounce, Nic Naitanui palmed the ball to Luke Shuey’s advantage. The Eagle's captain then paddled the ball forward, collected, dished it to Tim Kelly who exploded into space and smacked the ball to the goalsquare where Josh Kennedy had the sit, marked and goaled. The whole thing took 12 seconds that felt like one breathless, perfect second.

The move was so simple, the entire break created from Naitanui’s single deft touch, all the space and unstoppable momentum the product of that one tap to advantage.

After that stunning passage, the Cats regrouped.

It felt like Geelong controlled most of the game, with more disposals than the Eagles, and a 95-57 advantage in marks, that spoke to how they dictated tempo with a precise and deliberate short passing game. The Eagles, meanwhile, struggled to break Geelong’s flow, but stayed in the game by winning stoppages and contested ball. Geelong played a stereotypically West Coast type of game, while the Eagles employed a stereotypically Geelong type of game. In the end, the Geelong style prevailed- and the Cats ended up losing.

Outside a stretch in the third quarter where West Coast’s forward half pressure was manic and completely suffocating, the Eagles never seemed properly in control of the match. They always loomed, though, and an eventual avalanche seemed inevitable. 

Naitanui was the key. In a tight game – perhaps the best, most well-played game of the season – Naitanui was the game-breaker, the player who existed outside the game’s tense cadences and turned everything on its head, one tap to advantage and one self-built clearance at a time. There were three phases to the game: Geelong’s precision, West Coast’s pressure, and Nic Naitanui.  

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Whenever the Eagles started to falter, Naitanui would give them a moment. He would make everything suddenly easy, his taps gifting the Eagles drive that was otherwise too difficult to create.

Naitanui won three centre clearances himself – the sight of him chasing the spill he’s created, head down and hunting the ball, fending off opponents and belting the ball forward, is one of football’s treasures. He does things, of course, that no one else can do – a ruckman who intercepts handballs like Paul George in passing lines and a leaper who tackles at ground level like an alligator.

Naitanui needed help, though, to finish off the Cats and he got it in the final quarter from Josh Kennedy.

Six weeks ago Kennedy looked finished. He’d had three shots at goal in the first three matches of the season. In the past three matches he’s had 19 shots, converting 15.

Kennedy’s transformation from the vague outline of Josh Kennedy into fully fledged, superstar Josh Kennedy is the most frightening West Coast development to come out of their sudden renaissance. Kennedy looked done – like 2019 Jarryd Roughead– and to go from ‘done’ to being the best forward in the competition over the past three weeks is an incredible lift for the Eagles and terrifying for everyone else.

Kennedy has never gotten much of the ball, instead, much like Naitanui, feasts on sudden, immense moments. The ferocious, cat-like athleticism of his younger days – where he would leap the highest and spring onto opponents the fastest – is gone, but the marking power is still there and so is the clinical accuracy. 

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His kick is pure and wonderfully simple, the stutter run-up the perfect release of tension before a sweet, uncomplicated strike with the classical right to left drift for a right-footer.

Kennedy only had seven disposals against Geelong, but his impact was decisive. He didn’t hit the scoreboard after the first play of the game until the fourth quarter, but in between he crashed packs around the ground and set up a Dom Sheed goal in the second quarter with a brave, booming kick into the corridor that you rarely see a power forward execute.

The last quarter was all Kennedy – with the collaboration with Naitanui the game’s masterpiece and perhaps the season’s masterpiece. In a set play deep inside 50, Kennedy put on the costume of the retired star Eagles midfielder that he was once traded for, pushing off of Harry Taylor and then sprinting through the drop-zone, snatching Naitanui’s tap at pace, and slotting a goal on the run. Despite being two club icons whose famous careers have run in parallel, Naitanui and Kennedy rarely directly combine, so it was fitting that they did so here, in a passage that felt iconic as it was happening.

Kennedy kicked the sealer too, with a giant mark at the tip of the goal square at the death, at full extension, though without much leap, his body just longer and more timely than everyone else.  

The gap between the West Coast of the past fortnight and the West Coast that was eviscerated by Port Adelaide and Gold Coast is remarkable.

The Eagles are playing with force and cohesion again, with big, powerful bodies on the inside complementing a vicious spread and precision outside of the contest. They’re back to playing their game of sharp angles into and out of the corridor, moving the ball quickly and getting it to Jack Darling and Kennedy isolated in space.

Albeit undermanned, against West Coast the Cats played close to their best game. In the past, their deliberate ball movement had been conservative and unadventurous – against West Coast it was slick and with purpose, chipping the ball with calculated direction instead of chipping it just to kill time. The Eagles, though, stuck around, and then pounced in the second half with a series of brilliant moments, the talent ultimately too overwhelming.

Little about West Coast’s first four matches made sense. Now, they make frightening sense again, with Kennedy and Naitanui, who were not supposed to be this good in 2020, chief among the reasons this team is so terrifying.

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