Was a somewhat coolish evening in Perth at Optus stadium that played host between the struggling, yet showing signs of promise West Coast Eagles and the high flying Essendon Bombers for round 8 in the Australian Football League 2024 season. Now with that mouthful and a bit of a long-winded introduction to the game let us talk about what actually happened during the match and then get onto the whole point of this blog shall we?
As AFL fans, especially West Coast fans would know is that their team, the main and successful team out of Perth, Western Australia have been struggling of late since the onset of the Wuhan virus chaos and drama in early 2020. They have had a few lean seasons and have been widely tipped that 2024 would be somewhat more of the same. While, I personally think this is amusing as I am not a West Coast fan, but you can understand why fans and the media in Perth would be highly critical and frustrated with such a team's recent seasonal performances given their rich, deep and successful history since joining the competition in 1987. Now you have the opposition, Essendon, known as the Bombers and have been around from the outset. They have been a rather up and down side in recent seasons with this inconsistent form preventing them from playing finals football post-season, something they have not experienced since 2004. However, this season things seem to be looking rather promising for the red and black with them sitting in the top 4 leading into this match. With a third of the season over, things are looking promising to break that drought.
The match started and the visitors from Victoria had started off strongly. It was looking like it might be the beginning of a bit of a blowout like in previous seasons for the Eagles. However, it wasn't long for the home side to muscle its way back into the match and really make Essendon fight for their leads. West Coast had kicked up several gears and were buoyed by the crowd cheering them on, forcing Essendon to create many unforced errors, costing them many opportunities to further their lead. This only kept West Coast within the contest and able to not drop their heads as they kept pushing to close the gap and possibly hit the lead. Essendon lead at every interval and ran home winners with 11 goals 11 points 77 to West Coast's 11 goals 5 points 71.
I personally didn't have anything to eat but I was with a friend and we had a few drinks with the usual mid-strength Bulleit bourbon at 13.75 and Matso's Ginger Beer also at 13.75. I had a can of V for 5.80, which is rather akin to service station prices and a ridiculous 6 dollars for a bottle of water. I have said it many times, and I will say it always. I feel that the alcohol was expensive and should be between 10 and 11 dollars. For full-strength I could understand the logic, but for mid-strength alcohol it is absurd, especially in these difficult economic times.
This was my first AFL game at the new stadium outside of WAFL football and any other sport that has been played at the stadium. The ground is clearly purpose built for AFL, a nice ground but a shame other sports arent ideally well suited for it. But all-in-all it is a good venue for the city, especially after suffering for so long with dilapidated facilities.
