West Coast supporters across the state last week vowed to cancel their subscriptions to The West Australian and leave the newspapers unpurchased in their displays in response to the sensational headline ‘Weak Coast Eagles’. The unprecedented front cover came in response to repeated attempts by the club to defend their besieged player Andrew Gaff, which included that ill-fated ‘golf story’ by Trevor Nisbett. But what has been going on at The West Australian since then, and how far down the rabbit hole does this declaration of war go? To partially answer this question we will have to put the clues into a timeline.

 Sunday August 5:

West Coast defeat the Fremantle Dockers 142 to 84 in a derby overshadowed by the incident between Andrew Gaff and Andrew Brayshaw off the play on the wing.

 

Monday August 6:

The West Australian along with all other media outlets around the country are publishing everything they can put together regarding the incident. See our previous articles; ‘AFL’s Week of the Lynch-Mob’ and ‘Is this the worst era for Sports Media Vilification?’ If you want to read more about where Critical AFL (facebook) stands on this issue.

In the evening Basil Zempilas takes an uncharacteristic stance on Channel 7’s weekly live cross to Adam Simpson, attacking him and the club over claims that recent handling of the on-field derby incident as well as a club official clashing with cameramen previously was an indicator that there was a culture issue at the West Coast Eagles, as well as an arrogance issue at the club.

 

Tuesday August 7:

The West Australian makes the unprecedented declaration of war on the West Coast Eagles football club, with a front page by chief sports editor Mark Duffield labelling the club ‘Weak Coast Eagles’ for the club’s attitude to recent issues. Both Zempilas and The West Australian receive a significant amount of negative feedback across social media, with platforms already exploding in debate over the heavily reported striking issue that has yet to be put to the tribunal at this stage.

 

Friday August 10:

Following further negative coverage of the derby incident throughout the week, The West Australian then chooses to entirely omit coverage of The West Coast Eagles in the weekly Pre-Game lift-out. Articles are instead headlined by debutants from the Fremantle Dockers leading into the weekend, supplemented by inside articles revolving around the Dockers as well as addressing the Port Adelaide game against the Eagles leading into the weekend – from a Port Adelaide perspective.

 

Monday August 13:

As one of our WA sides breaks headlines across the nation for it’s second after-the-siren victory over Port Adelaide in as many years, the other defeats the bottom of the ladder Carlton in an impressive second half display. The Fremantle victory is a dead-rubber with 2 remaining home-and-away games leading into the finals, the West Coast victory places the Eagles in the driver’s seat to finish top 2 leading into finals, a position widely accepted by football critics as a minimum requirement for WA sides to legitimately challenge for a premiership… Front page in The West Australian AFL lift-out ‘The Game’ is Hayden Ballantine.

 

Tuesday August 14:

Following direct communication from this page (Critical AFL) with Damian Barrett on Friday & Saturday (10th & 11th of August), and what we can only assume was a subsequent weekend of investigation, the explosive claim was made on the sports reporter’s weekly podcast ‘The Sounding Board’ that sources pointed to a directive from the very top at not only The West Australian newspaper but also at Channel 7, that Kerry Stokes wanted West Coast to pay. My input to Damian Barrett on the previous Friday evening; was that there was clearly a full scale rift playing out between The West Australian and the West Coast Eagles in light of all the evidence from the week catalogued above, and that the eastern states media are potentially completely oblivious to the way news in WA plays out. From here you can draw your own conclusions if you listen to The Sounding Board podcast – aptly titled ‘Rowing the Company Boat’.

 

Wednesday August 15:

The West Australian continues the trend of restricting all coverage of The West Coast Eagles to; headlines about the Andrew Gaff controversy (again, please refer to our article ‘Is this the worst era for Sports Media Vilification?’) or otherwise opposition perspective articles; with three articles on the inside sports cover relating to the Melbourne Demons and the status of the side leading into the weekend against the local-antagonists of the narrative West Coast.

 

In light of the timeline trend above, and taking into consideration the claims of leading national sports News-breaker Damian Barrett in follow-up to our claims, we have to ask ourselves; what is Kerry Stokes’ media outlets up to, and is an agenda as blatant as this one ethical when it comes from so high up in a large media organisation? Absolutely not. It goes without saying that in a two-team town, local media will be providing sporting insights with a WA bias, however the in-house declaration of war against the Eagles reeks of ego and misuse of power. So what do we as a state do with a newspaper and TV station that freely demonstrates such blatant misuse of power? Perhaps Mike Nahan had the answer over the weekend…