Most West Coast Eagles aficionados are aware that Chad Fletcher’s other sporting passion is surfing. And in the vernacular of his board-riding buddies, the star midfielder waded through the slop to catch the wave of his life.
When Fletcher began plotting his season he would never have imagined it to have the peaks and troughs that eventuated.
It started badly when he fell off his board during a pre-season excursion to Triggs and he battled for consistency as he struggled to adjust to a changing role. Then it produced a spectacular finish with a sensational one-point grand final triumph in which he was one of the club’s best afield.
The finish was brilliant, but for a man who had figured in the top four in the club champion award four times in the previous five years, it was frustrating from an individual perspective.
“My year, personally, probably wasn’t that great,” Fletcher assessed. “It wasn’t as consistent as I wanted it to be. It didn’t start that well, but it (the surfing accident) had absolutely no impact on my footy. The position I was playing was a bit different for me, but I think I adapted in the latter half of the year.
“It was good to go OK in the grand final. My finals series hadn’t been that great. I had one good game leading into the grand final and two bad ones. I was playing on a pretty good player in Jude Bolton and thought I did pretty well on him.
“At the end of the game I was just relieved that we had actually achieved something. Jubilation. I just dropped to the ground by myself for about a millisecond and then I just said to myself, ‘what are you doing, I need to hug someone.’
“So I jumped up, ran over to Coxy, jumped on his back and I felt as tall as the three-tier stand. It’s better than I could ever have imagined. If you could bottle that, it’s priceless, it’s just an amazing feeling.
“You work so hard. It’s not just this football season it’s over your whole career. It starts in junior football, you practise everything, train so hard and finally you get the reward.”
For Fletcher that hard work started as a kid, playing for the Karrinyup Junior Football Club, when he was part of an exceptional teenage team. Tyson Stenglein, who savoured the premiership triumph with Fletcher, as well as former Eagle Phil Read, current Fremantle star Des Headland and former Subiaco and Swan Districts utility player Adam Lange were all part of that outstanding Karrinyup team.
“We won the under-13s, but we had a pretty good side – Adam Lange, Tyson Stenglein, Des Headland and Phil Read were all part of it - so it would have been pretty devastating to lose back then,” he said.
“We had a pretty amazing side at Karrinyup so if we hadn’t won that it would have been a pretty big disappointment.
“Tyson and I grew up in the same suburb and the same street, so we were friends before we started playing footy. We just mucked around as kids, went surfing together and formed our bond from there. We also played at Subiaco together. We split up for six years while he was in Adelaide.
“I looked for all the guys. It’s not just your close mates you seek out. I think one of the first guys I went to was Nico (Mark Nicoski), because he had a huge start to the football season and he was a big reason why we made it there.
“He was in my thoughts pre-game and I wanted to play for him because he wanted to be out there so bad. He won one (premiership) at Subi which was good. Because he has come from Subi and he’s come off the rookie list it is similar to the way I came onto the list.
“He’s got a lot to offer. Individual awards come and go, they don’t really mean much to be honest. They probably mean something at the end of your career, but as you‘re playing they don’t mean much.
“The biggest achievement in the AFL is to play in a premiership and to do it with guys that you share a common bond with and that you will have a great friendship with for the rest of your lives; it is really satisfying.”
While 2006 does not rank with Fletcher’s best from a personal perspective, he still finished 13th in the club champion award and was an important component of the premiership triumph.
He had 25 possessions and took two marks, often providing that hard-running link option through the midfield which has been the hallmark of his football to this point in his career.
After being recruited to the rookie list in 1998 he was elevated to the senior squad the following season and is now closing in on life membership. He is three games shy of the qualifying mark of 150 games.
That would be a remarkable accomplishment for one of five premiership players who had either been on the rookie list early in their careers or who were still on it when playing in the grand final. The others were Dean Cox, Quinten Lynch, Steven Armstrong and Brett Jones.
