Eagles v Dockers: Western Derby is passionate, occasionally ugly and prone to long winning streaks

First, you’re hoping that Elliot Yeo recovers from his early season calf injury in time to play and bolster an Eagles midfield against a Fremantle team that has shown itself to be vulnerable against bigger, stronger mids early this season.

Second, you’re hoping that the Eagles can break one of the stranger patterns of rivalry match-ups the AFL has: The Western Derby is a rivalry of winning streaks and the Dockers are three wins into a winning run over their cross town rivals.

There is a reason why many regard the derby as an inferior cross-town match up to the Showdown rivalry that exists in Adelaide between Port and the Crows.

It is no less fierce.

It has, at times, been ugly on the field between WA’s two AFL teams, although as far as we know they haven’t squared off in a brawl at a hotel as Port’s Josh Carr and Adelaide’s Mark Ricciuto did at Adelaide’s Ramsgate Hotel after one Showdown clash in 2002.

There was the infamous Demolition Derby of 2000 which saw Dale Kickett and Phil Read stand toe to toe and “punch on” on Subiaco’s Oval’s half-forward flank, with Kickett receiving a nine-match ban. Read got two weeks and more “shiners” than he had eyes after coming off second best.

There was Josh Carr’s own piece of derby history during his stint at Fremantle in 2007 when he made it his business to make Ben Cousins’ life a living hell. The Eagles crowd got so agitated that two spectators hurled a pie and a drink over the fence at him and security staff later admitted they feared a riot.

And most recently there was the 2018 Andrew Gaff punch that left Andrew Brayshaw, then 18, with a broken jaw and shattered teeth. It earned Gaff a seven-match ban which ruled him out of the Eagles’ grand final win over Collingwood. Gaff could single-handedly drive the Russians out of the Ukraine now and would still be booed by Freo fans.

Fierce? Yes.

Close? Not often enough.

The head-to-head score over the 28 years of the rivalry has the Eagles 32-23 ahead, but that tells a deceptive tale.

West Coast won the first nine derbies played between 1995 and 1999, when they were a battle-hardened, two-time premiership team against the younger newbies. The derbies back then often looked more like men versus boys than fierce, even combat.

The first derby, in round seven 1995, became known as the ‘Mother‘s Day Massacre’ as Mick Malthouse’s Eagles put their foot on the throats of Gerard Nessham’s young Dockers and beat them by 85 points.

They didn’t let them up for air until Western Derby 10, in round 16 of 1999, when Damian Drum’s Fremantle won by 47 points to make the head-to-head at the turn of the century 9-1.

That means that in 45 derbies played over the 23 seasons since the scoreline is 23-22 West Coast’s way. But all too often, one team’s dominance over the other has been almost as absolute as Malthouse’s team over Neesham’s.

There was one period of gloriously even uncertainty.

From the Demolition Derby late in 2000 until the Josh Carr derby of 2007, dubbed the ‘Carr Crash Derby’, when Josh’s brother Matt joined in on the torment of Cousins, 15 derbies were played. The Eagles won eight, the Dockers won seven and you went to each game unsure who was going to come out on top.

The Eagles had Cousins, Daniel Kerr, Chris Judd, Darren Glass and Dean Cox. The Dockers had Carr, Matthew Pavlich, Aaron Sandilands, Luke McPharlin and Peter Bell.

It was on and it was fierce.

In all other eras, winning streaks have been hard to break once they got started.

After West Coast’s initial nine, Fremantle won seven in a row between 2007 and 2010 and another six in a row between 2012 and 2015, clawing their way to within one win of the Eagles overall head-to-head lead before Adam Simpson’s team turned the tables in round 20 of 2015 and then peeled off 11 derby wins in a row.

Then, in round 22 of 2021, an undermanned Fremantle pulled off a stunning 15 point upset of the Eagles to tip them out of the finals race and start the latest three-game streak.

Only 16 of the 55 derbies so far have had a margin of less than 20 points.

Only nine have had a margin of 10 points or less, which is a remarkably low figure in an equalised AFL competition.