Latest news with #EastPerth
West Australian
06-07-2025
- Sport
- West Australian
WAFL 2025: East Perth defender Ethan Regan says Royals still have point to prove against competition's best
WAFL 2025: East Perth defender Ethan Regan says Royals still have point to prove against competition's best
West Australian
26-06-2025
- Sport
- West Australian
WAFL 2025: Swan Districts games record holder Tony Notte to retire after East Perth match this weekend
WAFL 2025: Swan Districts games record holder Tony Notte to retire after East Perth match this weekend
ABC News
20-06-2025
- Sport
- ABC News
Jeremy McGovern retires as one of the West Coast Eagles' all-time greats
Jeremy McGovern's footy career was a long-odds bet to begin with. McGovern, the son of former Fremantle player Andrew McGovern, was taken with pick 44 in the 2011 rookie draft. The chances of him playing 197 games, winning a flag and earning five All-Australian blazers would have been, at best, very slim. Then-Eagles recruitment boss Trevor Woodhouse admits he probably only looked at the kid from North Albany because of his surname, and decided to roll the dice. "I think back then it was probably easier to just take some speculative rookies, I don't think the scrutiny was on them like it is today," Woodhouse told Fox Sports. McGovern sat on the Eagles' rookie list for three years without playing an AFL game. Then, in early 2014 at the age of 21, he sat crying in a meeting with new Eagles coach Adam Simpson and an assortment of club staff, fearing the worst. He had relaxed a little too thoroughly during an off-season trip to Phuket and returned in sub-elite condition. McGovern's footy career looked over before it began. "They were talking about ripping contracts up, which was fair enough," he told the Backchat podcast. In the era of the AFL ultra-athlete, skin-folds and beep tests, McGovern had a refreshingly old-school frame. "I'm not the fittest-looking footballer," he once said. That 2014 meeting resulted in him being sent away to train on his own, and after regaining his condition and stringing some solid performances together for East Perth at WAFL level, he was selected to make his senior debut against Carlton in round six. Two years later he was an All-Australian, the first of five blazers he would earn. McGovern's greatest strength was his ability to read the play, and the flight of the ball through the air, better than just about anybody else. It's a trait he traces back to his boyhood, playing footy with Indigenous kids on a red-dirt oval in the remote community of Warburton, about 1,500 kilometres from Perth. "Every now and then, I'd sit back and watch how the Indigenous boys up there played footy," he told The Age. "I'd try to mimic how they were doing it. They were so good. They're just natural footballers up there. They don't get taught. "[They] probably had the best judgement I've seen. "That's where I started reading the ball." It was a trait he used to help the Eagles repel opposition attacks, and begin their own, for more than a decade. The term "intercept mark" should be renamed a "Gov", given all he's done to popularise the term. Where coaches of a bygone era might have exhorted him to punch, McGovern's vision and magnetic hands offered West Coast the perfect way of turning defence into attack. It was a trait he used to brilliant effect in the frantic final stages of the 2018 grand final. With less than three minutes to play, he read Adam Treloar's kick inside Collingwood's 50, peeled off his man and planted his knee in Brody Mihocek shoulder to mark, kick-starting one of the most famous grand final moments — up there with Wayne Harmes's knock back, or Matthew Scarlett's toe poke. "What a player," Bruce McAvaney said of him as it happened, and McAvaney has seen plenty. If reading the play was McGovern's best trait, his courage was not far behind. He needed six painkilling injections to play in that grand final, after he tore his oblique muscles during the preliminary final against Melbourne the week before. Then, during the game, his ribs were cracked. Speaking after the match about the ordeal he had endured in the week leading up to the biggest day of his football career, McGovern offered a sore smile and said: "You've got to love your footy." The site of a banged-up McGovern hauling himself up off the ground after bone-jarring collisions became routine over the years for West Australian football fans. Just when you thought his day was surely over, he would shrug off a trainer and throw himself into the fray again. Now, after the latest in what the club has described as "multiple concussions" over his career, McGovern has been advised to retire on medical grounds. When his case was referred to the AFL's "concussion panel", the writing was on the wall. With the spectre of lawsuits from former players who played after head knocks hovering over the league, it seemed unlikely the panel would advise anything else. With a long life to be lived after football, and many more memories to be made off-field, he has read the play here just as well as he did throughout a wonderful career, painful though it may be. The West Coast Eagles have produced defensive greats like Glen Jakovich, Ashley McIntosh and Darren Glass, and Jeremy McGovern more than belongs in that illustrious company. When it comes to all-time Eagles greats, he is in the very top tier. WA footy will be poorer without him patrolling the half-back line, watching his man, but always with one eye scanning ahead reading the play.
West Australian
15-06-2025
- Sport
- West Australian
WAFL 2025: South Fremantle star Haiden Schloithe reveals league ambitions after successful return from cancer
South Fremantle champion Haiden Schloithe has revealed when he hopes to break back into the Bulldogs powerhouse league side after a remarkable return to football just months after being diagnosed with cancer. Schloithe collected 13 disposals, took seven marks and kicked a goal in limited gametime for the Bulldogs' reserves in their win over East Perth. It was an incredible performance from the Sandover medallist considering he was diagnosed with cancer at the start of the year and is now in remission after three bouts of chemotherapy and surgery. Schloithe sparked emotional scenes when he kicked a goal midway through the second term in a fairytale moment at Fremantle Community Bank Oval. 'I was excited, nervous, anxious — a bit of everything really but more so excited that the day came around and I was able to have a run and a kick again. I got through unscathed which is great overall,' he told The West Australian. 'It (kicking that goal) was a feeling you can't really describe. It was pretty special, and I was willing it through and it only just did. 'There was a lot of emotion, the joy of getting back out there and the happiness as well as the boys all getting around me. It's a pretty special feeling, I will be forever grateful.' Schloithe said he would now look to play a full game in the reserves against Peel Thunder next weekend before targeting a league berth against Perth in round 12. The five-time fairest-and-best winner will undoubtedly only boost a powerful Bulldogs side that consolidated their spot on the top of the ladder with a thrilling 15.7 (97) to 12.15 (87) win over East Perth on Saturday. Schloithe said the prospect of another premiership to go with his 2020 grand final triumph helped drive him to return to football. 'It's one of the big reasons why I was so eager to get back, the boys are flying,' he said. 'This group's got something special, and we can do something special this year. I just witnessed a bloody cracking game of WAFL footy (in the win over the Royals). 'I'm chomping at the bit to, I really want to be back out there with the boys and helping the team get a win.' It comes as key recruit Trey Ruscoe took the lead in the race for the Bernie Naylor Medal on the back of a career-best seven goals against the Royals. Ruscoe now sits on 33 goals — three ahead of four-time winner in West Perth spearhead Tyler Keitel.
Perth Now
10-06-2025
- Sport
- Perth Now
Footy hall of fame has first father-daughter members
Erin Phillips has become only the second woman inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame, while also completing its first father-daughter combination. The Adelaide and Port Adelaide star was a marquee name when the AFLW started in 2017 and she joins women's pioneer Debbie Lee, who was inducted four years ago. Phillips paid an emotional tribute to her dad Greg, and Lee, who were at Tuesday's annual induction dinner in Melbourne, in her acceptance speech. "To Dad, I can't imagine how hard it would have been to tell your 13-year-old daughter that she couldn't play the game she loves any more," she said. "And 27 years later, she's standing next to you in the hall of fame." Phillips thanked the "incredible women" who made the AFLW possible and singled out Lee. "You kicked down this door so others could walk through," she said. "I'm so proud to be by your side and I can't wait to kick down more doors with you Deb." Phillips ended her stellar playing career at the end of 2022. The five-year player eligibility rule for the Hall of Fame was changed for women last year. AFLW players can now be inducted within a year of retirement and she was an obvious candidate. Her father, Port Adelaide great Greg, was inducted in 2020. Fos and Mark Williams, Hayden Bunton Sr and Jr and umpires Jack McMurray Sr and Jr are the father-son inductees. Phillips was Adelaide's inaugural captain and the first women's best and fairest winner, playing in three Crows flags despite needing a knee reconstruction. She then switched to Port Adelaide when they joined the league in 2022. When the women's league started in 2017, marquee players such as Phillips were crucial for its profile and credibility. Phillips, a former WNBA and Australian basketballer, immediately established herself as one of the AFLW's elite players. Also on Tuesday night, South Australian goalkicking machine Ken Farmer was elevated to legend status and St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt joined Phillips as inductees. Farmer, who died in 1982, is the SANFL's most prolific goalkicker, with 1417 for North Adelaide from 1929-41 in 224 games at an extraordinary average of 6.33 per game. He was never goalless in a game and coached the Roosters to two premierships. Riewoldt holds St Kilda's record for the most games as captain, with 221 of his 336 matches. His induction was delayed because his family spent time in the United States. The key forward was a five-time All Australian who went agonisingly close to a premiership, playing in St Kilda's draw and two losses across 2009-10. Riewoldt said he had made his peace with not being able to help the Saints win their elusive second flag "Rather than feeling like I walked away with the game still owing me something, I walk away feeling like the game gave me absolutely everything," he said. Seven-time East Perth premiership player George Owens was this year's first historical inductee. Apart from his swathe of premierships at East Perth and the 1925 Sandover Medal, Owens also umpired five WAFL grand finals.
