West Coast labelled criticism of their stars’ health “irrelevant”, “ridiculous” and never “true facts” lower than a 12 months in the past.
But now the membership has conceded some stars weren’t “at the top” of their recreation in a backflip that has angered AFL commentator Kane Cornes.
Cornes went on the report basically “fat shaming” a number of West Coast gamers as early as final April when the Eagles’ season slipped away earlier than their dismal seventeenth end.
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He accused Simpson of letting skilled requirements slip, earlier than being labelled a “shock jock” in response from Eagles CEO Trevor Nisbett.
Now Cornes has labelled the membership’s response to his feedback “disgraceful” given each coach Adam Simpson and captain Luke Shuey have now spoken out about how match the gamers are this pre-season.
“You say: ‘We made some mistakes’ (after the initial fitness concerns in 2022); it’s the way you word it, Cornes said on SEN WA.
“(Simpson should have said) We made some mistakes in our pre-season, I don’t think the players have been as hungry as I would have liked them to have been.
“Yep there’s been mitigating factors around that – part of that is some injuries they had, but that doesn’t excuse them for having a poor diet and letting themselves put on weight and get out of shape.
“There’s many exercises you can do that are non-weight bearing that can keep your fitness up.
“Of course they can word it in a way rather than come out and say ‘Nah, Kane Cornes is a shock jock because he’s called us unfit’ – that was a disgraceful response from Adam Simpson and Trevor Nisbett when it was clear for everyone to see that Elliot Yeo was overweight, Nic Naitanui was overweight, Tim Kelly was out of shape.
“Everyone could see it except them – or they could see it but they weren’t prepared to put their hand up and say they made a mistake.”
And Cornes wasn’t the one knowledgeable to take intention on the Eagles, with ex-AFL recruiter Matt Rendell labelling some West Coast gamers “genuinely fat”.
“I don’t take anything Kane Cornes says as any value whatsoever,” Nisbett advised 7NEWS again in August.
“Some of the stuff he says is just ridiculous and it’s sad actually that he’s gone to those levels because it’s just not fair.”
But in latest weeks each Simpson and Shuey conceded the health requirements have been the main target after final 12 months’s horror season.
“They are probably as fit as I’ve seen them so that’s a big tick for us,” Simpson stated.
“Look when there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Shuey later revealed.
“A lot of people externally were calling us ‘unfit’ last year – and they probably weren’t completely off the mark with that suggestion.
“But internally we were always going to figure out once we reviewed the season what we needed to get better at – and you can’t do anything unless you’re fit in this game anymore.
“So our first step over the off-season was making sure we came back in good shape.”
Eagles footy boss Gavin Bell stated gamers are conscious they weren’t on high of their recreation final season, and that the membership’s seventeenth place end was all of the motivation they wanted.
“I think you have a year like last year and you realise that you need to be at the top of your game to be not only competitive but to win games of footy,” he stated on SEN.
“We weren’t able to do that last year.
“I think that’s giving some real strong motivation to our leaders who have come back in good nick.”
Originally revealed as ‘Disgraceful’ Eagles slammed for backflip after livid response to ‘fat-shaming’ of some gamers
Source: www.news.com.au
