West Coast Eagles veteran Jack Darling is under fire from a fan base whose love has often been conditional

The first is Josh Kennedy, who kicked 723 goals in a 295 game career and led the club’s goalkicking in eight out of 12 years. He made All-Australian teams three years in a row and became one of the Eagles’ most loved players.

The other is Jack Darling, who has kicked 494 goals from 265 games so far and topped the club’s goalkicking four times. He made an All-Australian team in 2019 but somehow became a whipping boy for frustrated Eagles fans and is not one of the club’s most loved players.

Whipping boys are usually known for unreliability and inconsistency but Darling has kicked 40 or more goals in seven of 12 completed seasons so far. He booted 39 goals in an eighth season and 30 goals in 2020, which was shortened to a 17-game home-and-away season, with matches played in a shorter format leading to lower scores.

Darling also kicked 24 goals in his debut season as an 18 year-old which means that, in 10 of 12 seasons, he has done all that could be expected of a second tall target in attack. In 2019 he did more, usurping Kennedy as the Eagles’ best forward to claim his All-Australian blazer.

Some inconsistent forwards achieve good tallies by kicking big numbers against weaker teams and then having the goals dry up against better opposition. But Darling has never kicked more than six goals in a game. He manages to score in almost every game. Since his debut year in 2011, Darling has only had two seasons when he has been kept goalless in more than three games.

It would be too strong to declare him the player Eagles fans love to hate.

But it would not be inaccurate to declare him one of the first West Coast players fans turn on for blame when team performances fall short of expectations.

The rough side of this conditional love for Darling bubbled over again at the weekend when he had four disposals against Richmond, only two touches after quarter time and kicked a single goal.

Peter Sumich, himself a West Coast forward once capable of raising the ire of fans, rated Darling’s effort a one out of 10 (and he got the one only because of his goal). Sumich declared that coach Adam Simpson should drop him and should even play without an emergency substitute if that is what it took to leave him out in these injury-riddled times for the club.

Saturday at the MCG was not one of Darling’s good days and this writer, doing a weekly report card on the Eagles for CODE Sports, rated his performance as a “fail”. But Darling’s critics can pull out a one wood when a putter would make the point more fairly and accurately.

Some would say that the mixed feelings towards Darling are the result of his absence from the club in the lead into the 2022 season which was presented as hesitancy to have the Covid-19 vaccination (at the time Darling claimed he had suffered a workplace injury).

But the fan base vitriol towards him started long before that.

Eagles fans might have warmed to him but it was only ever lukewarm and capable of going cold quickly through the course of an AFL winter.

East Fremantle coach Bill Monaghan, who was West Perth’s senior coach when Darling came through the club’s talent pathway, said there was always a fine line between a player who was perceived as confident and one perceived as arrogant. Most very good players, he said, have at least a bit of arrogance about them.

He stressed that the Darling he speaks of is the teenager from 2010 and not the man we see now. But he believes Darling might have been harshly regarded by recruiters and others in the football industry from the start.

“Probably as a young kid everyone had an opinion of him as an arrogant, big-headed type of kid. It is a popular misconception of people who are confident in their own ability,” he said.

“Jack always had this persona and confidence about him.”

Darling had been a star of the National under 18 titles as a bottom age player but by the time he became eligible for the draft pool his form had drifted, even though he was playing regular senior football at West Perth, and he been involved in a couple of off-field incidents that found their way into the public arena.

AFL recruiters reacted. Darling was touted as a top five pick in 2009 a year ahead of his draft, but slid all the way to pick 26 before the Eagles took him in 2010.

Monaghan points out that the sort of things Darling got judged harshly for were the sort of things many teenagers find themselves mixed up in.

“He went through a fair bit as a kid and he got scrutinised unfairly. In my opinion recruiters and other people treated him poorly,” he said.

Monaghan stresses that he is not speaking as one of Darling’s confidantes. He was his coach for a year or two and then the pair went on separate football journeys and don’t keep in touch.

But, watching from a distance, he believes the rough beginning might have led to Darling forming a different view of the sport to many other youngsters. He views him as a person who probably prefers to play football as his living and otherwise stay out of the public eye.

“I get the feeling he doesn’t care what other people think about him,” he said. “He beats to the sound of his own drum. From all reports he is comfortable with his life with his family. I think he is just different.

“I think he is pretty comfortable in his own skin and people can say or do what they want but he is going to do what he believes in.”

And the reality is that what Darling believes in has produced a fine AFL career. His numbers (265 games, 494 goals) stack up well alongside the well regarded Jack Gunston who, like Darling, has been a secondary target for most of his 232 games and 440 goals for Adelaide, Hawthorn and Brisbane.

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He is not that far adrift of a player like Adelaide’s Taylor Walker, a primary target for most of his 246 games, which have produced 554 goals. Richmond’s Tom Lynch, alongside Kennedy as one of the greatest power forwards of his era, has 456 goals from 216 games.

Monaghan also points out that while Darling cuts an impressive figure on an AFL field he is 191 centimetres tall playing as a key forward. Carlton midfielder Paddy Cripps (195cm) and Bulldog Marcus Bontempelli (193cm and also a midfielder) are bigger.

“I think if you just look at the cold, hard facts the numbers stack up pretty well,” Monaghan said. “They are pretty good numbers when you stack them up against players in Melbourne who people will say are absolute superstars but who are averaging two goals a game.”