A Foundation Day encounter between modern Western Australian Football League (WAFL) clubs of West Perth Falcons and the East Perth Royals at a cool and pleasant afternoon at Joondalup Arena was the stage for the high fancied 2024 premiership visitors East Perth against the touted finals challengers and often a dark horse in this competition being the hosts of this match, West Perth. East Perth have been playing some good and solid football so far at this stage, although there have been signs for the Royals that the wheels may be wobbling and the bus towards the 2024 premiership might be spluttering and struggling to close out matches. West Perth on the other hand do not have the same pressures as the Royals and have been showing signs of promise as they aim to rebuild and take a shot at the flag in their own time with no added pressures of expectations unlike previous seasons. However, West Perth, especially at home in Joondalup are to not be taken lightly and will always be a tough encounter. Given this encounter will be especially challenging with Foundation Day and being East Perth.
It was a challenging affair, though East Perth were in control for most of the game and would ensure that there was a slight buffer of a lead as they would run into the quarter time break with a two goal lead and were off to a good start.West Perth would claw their way back into the contest for the second quarter making East Perth work hard for their lead. It was being whittled away and East Perth were determined to hang in there at the main break with the lead at 6 points.
West Perth had found gaps in the Royal's defensive lines and were able to break them down, scoring two goals and two points, with the lead building to a possible 20 plus point lead towards three-quarter time, it looked like West Perth had broken them down and the game was there to be won for the hosts. West Perth went into their team huddle for the three-quarter break only 6 points ahead. It was going to be a close last quarter with it being a kick in it. This was going to be a war of attrition and a battle. Both sides simply couldn't land a knock-out blow to build upon any lead to make them into more comfortable ones. This was also due to both sides being highly wasteful with the ball, poor connections of kicks and hand-passes, strong defensive lines being able to break down attacking pushes into their attacking 50 metre arcs and just simply both sides not being able to flow and gel together and build upon good passages of play into something greater.
East Perth scored two goals early in the last quarter with West Perth holding firm and preventing the Royals from breaking open the game, but also wasteful possession and passing from the visitors would make the last quarter that much harder for themselves. West Perth kicked a goal and had hit the lead towards the end of the match with East Perth snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat with a well times goal immediately after West Perth's crucial goal and would run out 3 point winners. This means that it would be my first experience of an East Perth win at the Joondalup Arena in quite some considerable time. I would say over ten years if I could accurately document that.
Now the food and beverages. We did not have any food on this occasion as the queues for food and drinks were too long and the match was a really close encounter we were simply glued to our seats. But my dear old father and I did manage to get an ice-cream and eventually a cool drink. Dad had a double hedgehog chocolate cone with nuts. I simply had a single chocolate one with a flake, as we both had a can of coke. The double was 8 dollars and the single was 6 dollars with the cans being 3 dollars. They weren't bad and went down well while watching the football. But all-in-all another good match between these two and was nice to head up to Joondalup to watch some football with Dad. Hopefully we can do it all again sometime soon.
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