West Coast Eagles: Tom Cole‘s return from a season-long ankle injury will be an important factor in the club’s rebuild

Tom Cole is one of the forgotten Eagles.

He is not, like Elliot Yeo, a two time All-Australian and club champion. He is not, like Dom Sheed, the bloke who kicked the winning goal in the 2018 grand final. He is not, like Campbell Chesser, the club’s first round pick at the 2021 national draft.

When those three went down within the space of 10 minutes in the first practice match the Eagles played last year, they became the story of the Eagles season.

Cole may not be one of the guns, but he is no mug either.

A 2018 premiership player at West Coast, Cole had played 72 of a possible 89 games before last season. And, crucially, he is at an age that makes him key to West Coast’s rebuild sustainability.

The club’s talent is mostly quite old or quite young. Players like Cole (25), Liam Duggan (26) and Tom Barrass (27) are the senior regulars who fall in the middle somewhere.

It turns out the ankle injury Cole suffered, and when he suffered it, should have made him part of the doom and gloom narrative the club confronted when Sheed, Yeo and Chesser all went down in the one game.

At the Eagles’ last match simulation before that fateful game, Cole lasted until the final 30 seconds of scheduled match time.

“It was a bit of an innocuous one too,” Cole recalled. “I just went over on it on the outside and I didn’t think it was much to be honest. I thought I would play the next couple of weeks. It turned out it was damage to my (ankle) cartilage which required surgery and a longer stint on the sidelines.”

A season on the sidelines, as it turned out.

Cole pushed to return late in the season, but he and the club eventually decided the sensible path was to not rush and he didn’t resume anything other than straight-line running until three weeks into the off-season.

On Friday against Port Adelaide, he played his first match other than intra club competition for more than a year.

“It feels good,” he said. “It has been a long time since I have played an official game of footy. It was nice to get through unscathed and good to get a win.

“I am slowly building into it and finding my touch on the footy again. It has been a slow build but I feel like I am starting to find some form now.”

His observations of the game?

“It was quick,” he continued. “The first pre-season game is always fast, one of the faster games of the year really. I was blowing a bit early but after the first quarter I was fine and it felt good to get a win.”

Cole was a senior regular before the injury and is going to need to be at the peak of his powers this season. The Eagles have always rated him highly but Jayden Hunt has joined the club, Yeo and Luke Shuey are tipped to spend time at half back where he plays most and the small defender roles will be arguably the hardest to break into this year.

Cole isn’t phased. Every player needs to have a second spot he can play, he said, and he has started learning the wing role in case the squeeze comes on.

“I just like the competition,” he said. “It is healthy and it keeps me on my toes. I have never been one to get comfortable with where I am at.”

Nor does he get too comfortable about the players he has to play on as a small defender.

Asked what it was like to play against 2018 premiership teammate Junior Rioli, he said he would rather play with him. And asked how he planned to go about playing on Adelaide’s Izak Rankine this week, he said a lot of small forwards gave him sleepless nights.

“A lot of small forwards are the same. They want to get you up and then work you back down the ground,” he said. “We will have plans to stop each one but it is not an easy job. Every week I have sleepless nights thinking about the forwards I have to play on.”