PRESIDENT’S REPORT On behalf of the Board of Directors, I have great pleasure in presenting my 10th report as President to the members of this great Club. What a rollercoaster we have been on over the last two years. After the magnificent premiership in 2019 the WAFC imposed recruiting and other restrictions designed to drag us back to the field. Did it work? In the COVID impacted eight game season “lightning carnival” of 2020 Mark Lawrence it was hard to tell, however clearly our players, coaches, staff, board, and supporters all felt badly disrespected after 2019 and that distraction was felt widely through the Club. Bring on 2021, and we again faced similar points and recruiting rules to the other top teams; we entered the year in the race for the premiership along with 2020 premiers South Fremantle, 2020 grand finalists Claremont and annual contender West Perth. It was a great WAFL season, there were a number of upsets, the top-five teams regularly beat each other and to show the evenness of the competition, the eventual premiers lost to bottom team West Coast (even if they had Luke Shuey and number of other useful mates that game) lost some form in the last three rounds being thumped by the 6th placed finisher by 44 points and then just fell over the line in our last game against lowly Peel Thunder to just hold on to the Minor Premiership. From that shaky season finish, Beau and senior group took all before them. The Reserves were magnificent and must take some kudos for making everyone believe again, taking the Club and entire senior group to new competitive heights that drove the group to the 16th Premiership in our 125th anniversary year. COVID did impact the competition, and everyone involved with it – business and the community faced challenges or business boomed. The second season to be disrupted meant plans changed regularity and opportunities had to be grabbed as they presented.
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One of those opportunities was grabbed at an all of football meeting in July. The meeting was called to understand the risks with playing a full season and an extended grand final date or to play less games and hold the season’s decider as early as possible. In what was a great outcome, the majority agreed (with us) that the AFL uncertainty provided WA football a unique opportunity to hold the public’s attention over the WAFL finals series. How good was the WA football festival that delivered AFL finals and the AFL Grand final in Perth and then fantastic interest in the lead up to the WAFL grand final and excellent crowd of nearly 30,000 that day. Well done to the WAFC, Wayne Martin, Scott Baker and the rest of the team. John Townsend’s article on October 4th “Subiaco Culture A Thing of Beauty” is an excellent commentary on our success and the work we all do the keep driving the Club to success. Well done John for your support of the WAFL, that article has been included in this annual report on page 43 in full and I commend it to you to read. Every year we must improve our Club to stay the benchmark, bringing in coaches, developing players and making sure all our people love being here and that makes Subi better. After a hiccup in 2020, the recovery to play both senior teams in a grand final and to win again is a great reflection on everyone here. We have only won sixteen (16) premierships in our one hundred and twenty-five years of existence, think about that! To win five in the last eight years, seven grand finals in that time just reinforces this era as our most successful in history. Our coaching group led by Beau Wardman have been very impressive again, Chayce Creedy continues to be pivotal developing young players as have several others. I have no doubt that Beau is the right man to continue to drive results at the Lions, well done Beau!
