McGovern – man of the moment

Jeremy McGovern will forever be remembered for his miraculous role in the West Coast Eagles’ 2018 grand final win. His bravery just to take his place in the side and then his last-minute heroics. A trademark intercept mark and a bullet-like 40m pass which helped set up Dom Sheed’s premiership-winning goal.

It is a special moment in grand final history. Like Barry Breen’s famous point in 1965 and the ‘Jesaulenko, you beauty’ mark in 1970. Phil Manassa’s four-bounce run and goal in 1977, Wayne Harmes’ knockback in 1979 and Dermott Brereton’s sheer courage in 1989.

They have a special place in football folklore and bring a smile to the face of true football people.

Jason Akermanis’ over-the-shoulder snap in 2002, the ‘Leo Barry, you star’ mark in 2005 and Daniel Chick’s tackle, smother, handball and shepherd in 2006. The Matthew Scarlett toe-poke in 2009, the Brendon Goddard grab in 2010 and Heath Shaw’s ‘smother of the millennium’ in the 2010 replay.

Lewis Jetta’s tearaway run with Cyril Rioli in 2012, the Nick Malceski snap in 2012 and Tom Boyd’s clincher in 2016.

McGovern’s extraordinary double effort, first to take one serious injury into the grand final and then to play with a second serious injury sits comfortably with every one of them.

Indeed, Eagles fans will never forget the moment McGovern put it all on the line in the closing seconds, leaving his opponent (Jordan DeGoey) to mark over Lewis Jetta and Brody Mihocek and pick out Vardy in the middle of the ground to help set up the match-winning goal.

But seven weeks earlier McGovern played an altogether different role in a similarly dramatic finish which was yet another dramatic moment in the Eagles’ fourth flag.

It was round 21 of 2018 when a McGovern goal after the siren gave West Coast a barnstorming four-point win over Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval.

It restored a semblance of normality in the West Coast camp and the club’s quest for the ultimate football prize after the much-publicised Andrew Gaff incident and one of the most dramatic weeks in club history.

Accordingly, it is the round 21 headline story for the continuing ‘Best of the Eagles’ flashback series.

West Coast had beaten Fremantle by 58 points in derby #46 the week before but instead of the joy that would normally come with such a win they had found themselves engulfed by a totally out-of-character incident involving one of the club leaders.

A loss to seventh-placed Port would only have added to the woes. They needed a reset.  But when the final siren sounded they were two points down. It was Port 9-4 to West Coast 8-8.

Twelve months earlier the Eagles had pulled off a miracle finals win over the same opposition at the same venue with a Luke Shuey goal after then siren. Could it possibly happen again?

West Coast had trailed 4.4 to 9.2 midway through the third term. Goals to Jamie Cripps and Dom Sheed cut the margin to 15 points at three-quarter time. It wasn’t impossible but Port, fourth on the ladder five weeks earlier, were not about to lie down.

Ten minutes into the final term Liam Ryan, in just his eighth game, took a screamer. He flew early over the top of teammate Nathan Vardy and Port’s Jasper Pittard, hung for what seemed like an eternity, and converted from 35m on an angle. Port by 10 points.

The next 15 minutes were goalless. Ryan kicked two behinds for the Eagles and Brendon Ah Chee one, while Robbie Gray missed a 45m chance he would normally kick.

McGovern marked in the back pocket. Typically brave, he switched play. It was an all or nothing kick. It just got past Brad Ebert and just was enough. Jack Redden was out. He found Elliot Yeo on the wing. He took a bounce and went long to full forward.

Dougal Howard made a strong spoil but Jack Darling gathered at ground level. A no-look handball over his head found Cripps, and Cripps found an unattended Mark LeCras running into goal from 5m. Port by two points.

Port killed the ball at the centre bounce once but from the secondary restart Yeo gathered. It spilled to Scott Lycett, and the big ruckman, in an unfamiliar role, fired it inside 50m.

He hit a leading McGovern on the chest and as the weary defender limped back to take his kick the siren sounded. Anthony Hudson said in commentary on FoxFooty: “He’s sore, he’s beaten and he’s battered but he’s going to have a kick from 48m after the siren to win it.”

Port had led from the first score to the final siren but it all counted for nothing. McGovern converted. For the second time in 12 months a blue and gold spear pierced the hearts of Power fans, delivering the second of what became four consecutive losses that saw them miss the finals.

The Eagles were back on track. And Yeo had enjoyed a memorable 100^th Eagles game, picking up two Brownlow Medal votes for 25 possessions, a goal, six tackles and five clearances. Shuey was best afield with 31 possessions and 11 clearances.

While the job was far from done, West Coast had woken from the nightmare of the week before. Despite a loss to seventh-placed Melbourne in round 22 they beat lowly Brisbane in round 23 to finish second on the home-and-away ladder and rolled into September in good shape.

They beat Collingwood, Melbourne and Collingwood again to claim the flag. The inclusion of Josh Kennedy and Will Schofield for the injured Brad Sheppard and Ah Chee, an emergency for the last four games of the year, were the only changes to the side that had beaten Port in round 21.

And while Sheed took the grand final glory for his magnificent late goal there was no change to the sublime, match-winning skills of McGovern.

It was later revealed by coach Adam Simpson that McGovern had spent the night after the preliminary final in hospital on a morphine drip with internal bleeding. He needed help from his father just to get to the hospital.

McGovern revealed he had also “torn a few muscles off the bone in my hip pointer” and admitted that for much of grand final week he didn’t expect to play.

Only pain-killing injections got him to the first bounce and then, after wayward suggestions he had cracked a rib in the preliminary final, he actually did break his ribs in the grand final. And still he found a way to pull off his match-winning intercept play.

Round 21 at a glance

West Coast have enjoyed a 17-16 win/loss record in round 21 during 33 years in the AFL, having won in round 21 for the last five years. They are 10-7 at home in round 21, going 2-0 at the WACA Ground, 7-7 at Subiaco and 1-0 at Optus Stadium. And they are 3-8 in Victoria, having won only at Docklands, where they are 3-2. They’ve gone 0-2 in round 21 matches at Whitten Oval, and 0-1 at the MCG, Waverley, Kardinia Park and Princes Park.

Interstate, they are unbeaten in South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland in round 21, going 1-0 at Football Park, Adelaide Oval, Sydney Showgrounds and Carrara.

Their best round 21 record is against Melbourne (3-1), Port Adelaide (2-1) and Carlton (2-1). They are 1-0 against Collingwood, Brisbane, Richmond and GWS, 1-1 against North Melbourne, Adelaide and StKilda, 1-2 against Geelong and Fremantle, 1-3 against Western Bulldogs, 0-1 against Hawthorn and 0-2 against Essendon.

A finals berth

The Eagles pretty much locked up their first finals berth when they beat Collingwood at Subiaco by 60 points in round 21, 1988. It was enough for them to sit fourth on the ladder, a win plus percentage inside the top five, needing only to avoid massive disaster in round 22 to play in September for the first time.

It was the fifth-placed eagles against the second-placed Magpies going into round 21, but you would not have known it as West Coast added 8.2 to 1.2 in the third quarter and 12.9 to 4.7 in the second half to win 16.15 (111) to 7.9 (51).

Dwayne Lamb (30 possessions) and Ross Glendinning (four goals) headed the statistics sheet, but it was Karl Langdon, Guy McKenna and Laurie Keene who took the Brownlow Medal votes.

More to life than football

Carlton went into round 21 in 1989 clinging to a faint hope of making the finals. They were six points plus percentage outside the top five with two games to play, needing a virtual miracle. West Coast were 12^th and out of the running. They were in spoiler mode, and they played it to perfection.

With 19-year-old 15^th-gamer Stevan Jackson kicking four goals to pick up three Brownlow Medal votes, the Eagles blitzed the Blues 21.22 (148) to 10.12 (72).

Jackson, Peter Sumich (four goals) and Geoff Miles (five goals) out-scored Carlton on their own in what turned out to be the 20^th and last Eagles game for Andrew MacNish.

It was the end of a West Coast career with a difference for a now 54-year-old whose Wikipedia page describes him as “a business consultant” before adding “former Australian rules footballer”.

A Wembley Downs junior, he had represented WA at the 1986 State of Origin carnival where, at 20, he won All-Australian honours and was a standout in WA’s three-point win over Victoria in which he took a huge mark and kicked a key goal late in a hectic final quarter.

A member of the inaugural Eagles playing list, he had kicked three goals on debut in the club’s first match in 1987 and a career-best five goals to go with 29 possessions in the last match of the same season.

He missed the entire 1988 campaign, played six games in 1989, spent 1990-91 on the Eagles list without playing a game, and after three games with Geelong in 1992 decided there was more to life than football.

Having completed a civil engineering debut during his playing career, he later did a master’s degree in Business Administration, served as CEO of the Bridgetown Shire from 1998-2003 and then at Busselton. He has since held various executive roles while completing three more tertiary qualifications, including a master’s degree in Sustainability Management.

A walk-up certainly for the AFL’s All-Academic team!

Career best for Lewis

There was a certain collaborative spirit of affinity between the West Coast Eagles and the Brisbane Bears in the late 1980s after the two clubs had joined the competition together in 1987. But on the field you wouldn’t know.

The Eagles won the first eight meetings between the two expansion clubs from 1987-91, with Chris Lewis producing one of his very best AFL performances in a 41-point triumph at Carrara in round 21, 1990. He had a career-best 38 possessions and kicked three goals to pick up three Brownlow votes.

Nine heart-stopping minutes

It was the top two on the AFL ladder when West Coast hosted Geelong at the WACA Ground in round 21, 1991, and in an absolute thriller the two sides combined to prove goals aren’t necessary for high tension.

The Eagles, 23 points down at quarter time, had led by four points at halftime, seven points at three-quarter time and by 13 points 11 minutes into the final term after Dean Kemp accepted a handpass from #48 to snap truly.

Who was #48? None other than an 18-year-old Glen Jakovich in his ninth game.

It was West Coast 12.9 to Geelong 10.8 with 19 minutes to play. West Coast, 13 points up, would not score again, and yet somehow found a way to hang on despite goals to Geelong from Tim Darcy and Billy Brownless.

The last nine minutes of the absorbing contest were scoreless but the home side hung on as Scott Watters had 31 possessions to pick up three Brownlow Medal votes.

West Coast would go on to finish top of the home-and-away ladder, and after beating second-placed Hawthorn in the qualifying final and Melbourne in the semi-final ran into Geelong again in the preliminary final. They prevailed by 15 points before losing the grand final to Hawthorn by 53.

He was born where?

It is a trivia question that will stump most people … who is the ex-AFL premiership player and senior coach born in Bloomington, Illinois?

A clue? It’s located 200km south-west of Chicago.

Not that sort of clue? He played his 50^th game for the West Coast Eagles in a 20-point win over Richmond at Subiaco in round 21, 1992.

It is none other than Don Pyke, West Coast 1992-94 premiership player and former coach of the Adelaide Crows.

The now 51-year-old is listed on the Internet among the famous people from Bloomingdale alongside McLean Stevenson, the actor who played ‘Henry Blake’ in the hit TV series ‘Mash’, Adlai Stevenson, 23^rd vice president of the US under Grover Cleveland, and a host of baseball, basketball and American football celebrities.

He is one of four AFL players known to have been born in the US, alongside Sanford Wheeler, who migrated down under aged five, grew up in Sydney and played 43 games with the Sydney Swans from 1989-94, basketball convert Jason Holmes, who played five games for St Kilda from 2014-17, and current Collingwood big man Mason Cox.

Pyke, whose father Frank had played for Perth in the WAFL, was born in the US in 1968 while his father was studying sports science at Indiana University. He returned to Australia in 1972, living first in Perth and later Canberra, where he represented ACT not only in football but also in cricket.

Recruited by WAFL club Claremont in 1987, he was not only a member of their premiership side that year but represented WA in cricket at under-19 level alongside future Australian Test players Brendan Julian and Alan Mullally.

A pre-draft selection by the Eagles in 1988 with Peter Sumich, Craig Turley, Scott Watters and Stevan Jackson, he went on to play in the 1991 losing grand final and the 1992-94 premierships. He shared the 1993 West Coast with Glen Jakovich and was runner-up to Jakovich in 1994.

Having retired from the AFL in 1996 after picking up a second WAFL flag with Claremont in that year, he later coached Claremont in 1999-2000, had time in administrative and Board roles at West Coast from 2001-04 and was an assistant-coach at Adelaide in 2005-06. After time out of the game he rejoined West Coast as a strategy coach in 2014 under Adam Simpson and replaced the deceased Phil Walsh as Adelaide senior coach in 2015.

In Pyke’s 50^th AFL game the Eagles beat Richmond by 20 points at Subiaco. Chris Mainwaring, with 22 possessions, was the only Eagle to top 20 while Peter Sumich (5) and Brett Heady (4) led the goal-kicking and Glen Jakovich received three Brownlow Medal votes.