Imagine this….it’s roughly 24 hours before the West Coast Eagles run onto Marvel Stadium to play North Melbourne.

The squad assembles at Mineral Resources Park, shortly before boarding a plane destined for Melbourne.

They gather in the lecture theatre, take their seats. Senior coach Adam Simpson is at the front of the room and he asks each player to introduce themselves. ‘My name is XXX, I’m from Subiaco and I play half-back.’

That might not be an entirely accurate portrayal of what unfolded ahead of their departure today, but it’s not totally unbelievable either.

It’s almost like a Crocodile Dundee moment. ‘Call that unprecedented. I’ll show you unprecedented!’

A squad of 44 players and 20 or more of them unavailable for this game against North Melbourne. It’s extraordinary, bordering on ridiculous. If it wasn’t farcical, it would almost be humorous.

But here were are in year three of this pandemic. Across that time, no one has needed to be more flexible or agile than the Eagles.

If the injury crisis wasn’t enough to deal with, now the pandemic has kicked in to rule out another dozen players as they have moved into AFL health and safety protocols.

No one has ever seen anything like this in professional sport in this country. And never likely to again. Maybe. The one thing this confounded virus has shown us is that anything, no matter how far-fetched, is possible.

When assessing the list of unavailable talent, consider, too, that defender Tom Cole and midfield draftee Campbell Chesser were placed on the inactive list allowing the club to add Hugh Dixon, Tom Joyce and Luke Strnadica and the depth of the crisis is further exacerbated.

The irony is that none of Dixon, Joyce or Strnadica is available to play against the Roos.

Last week the club had four debutants – Dixon, Sam Petrevski-Seton, Brady Hough and Patrick Naish. And former North Melbourne midfielder Declan Mountford and Fremantle forward-midfielder Stefan Giro were emergencies.

Giro is in this team, so is Angus Dewar (Subiaco), Aaron Black (West Perth) and former Eagle Brayden Ainsworth, who is now with Perth.

Three weeks ago they would never have imagined another opportunity at the elite level might be forthcoming. Now they will board a flight this morning with a bunch of new teammates and prepare to play at Marvel Stadium.

They and 18 others are part of a COVID Contingency list. Many of them filtered into Eagles headquarters yesterday for PCR tests, to ensure they were cleared to play.

The last two years have been crazy, but this situation is off the charts.

When the Eagles list management team nominated the players it could recruit to a COVID contingency list, they went through the available talent in the WAFL meticulously.

They hoped this situation would not arise, but the Eagles are calling on a number those players to get in the trenches and dig in with their new teammates.

To a man the attitude of those players has been exemplary. They have been all-in from the get-go and it is not an east scenario for them either. Fortunately a high percentage have played at the level previously, so rocking up for an AFL fixture is not completely foreign to them.

There are also a couple of developing West Coast players who will get a taste of senior footy ahead of their team. It could be daunting for them too.

Simpson, the rest of the coaching staff and senior players will do their best to normalise the game and pass on the fundamentals of the game plan.

They’ll have a crack and they’ll have fun doing it.