It was a year of transformation; a year of revelation and a year of maturation.

The transformation came in the shape of a name change for the governing body from the VFL to the AFL. The revelation came through the emergence of the West Coast Eagles as the genuine article, evidenced with the maturity in which the club dealt with the toughest imaginable schedule at the back end of the season.

While the evolution of the expanded VFL competition into a national entity was in name only at that point, it was done so in the knowledge that a team from Adelaide would join the league in 1991 and add another dimension.

On the local front, it was more a revolution with the West Coast Eagles finally receiving a level of support deserving of the WA football flagship. It found a home.

Finally the club was settled at Subiaco Oval, it had a regular training base and most of it all, it had stability. And routine. They trained at their home ground. Just like Footscray at the Western Oval, Carlton at Princes Park, Essendon at Windy Hill.

So in this, the fourth year of the West Coast Eagles, they finally got a foothold and there were major events at either end of the season that helped to define it. Being based at Subiaco was the start of the maturing process and the run home was the manifestation of it.

Many times after Malthouse had left the club and was asked to reflect on the definitive period in club history he would suggest that the turning point was the last six weeks of the 1990 campaign.

It was certainly a challenging schedule and one which ultimately helped – almost gifted – Collingwood the winning of their first premiership since 1958.

The Eagles finished the home and away season with road trips to Carrara to play Brisbane and then backed it up with a match against Geelong at Kardinia Park in round 22. At the time the toughest travelling assignments possible.

The Eagles needed to beat both Brisbane and Geelong to be assured of playing finals, an assignment that was completed with aplomb. But it was not without significant challenge.

The Brisbane game represented the longest haul in Australian domestic sport, throw in the complication of a pilot’s strike that necessitated improvisation and an eight-hour flight and the degree of difficulty multiplied.

The Eagles won both of those games to finish on 64 points – or 16 wins – for the season and finished third. Under the top five finals system that meant a double chance and a show-down with Collingwood in the qualifying final.

Essendon, who finished on top of the table, had a bye while West Coast slugged out a draw against the Pies. There was no provision for extra time in those days, so the Eagles flew east for the fourth time in as many weeks for the replay. The Bombers had another week off and watched Collingwood eclipse the WA team.

The Eagles buttered up again the following week against Melbourne and for the third week in a row were at Waverley Park. They dispensed with the Demons to win the first final in club history.

The Magpies, meantime, despatched the underdone Bombers, so West Coast returned to Waverley for the fourth successive week and the travel weary Eagles were no match for Essendon, losing by a little more than 10 goals.

While ultimately disappointed with the defeat and disillusioned with the fixturing, it was a period when, as Malthouse so often suggested, the Eagles grew up. The view of the first-year Eagles coach was that if his players could cope with that and keep bouncing back, they could cope with anything. It galvanised the group.

Importantly, it also provided the club with some strong ammunition in the debate for change. That non-Victorian teams who finish higher on the ladder than their opponents deserved the right to host finals at their home venue.

Twelve months later that argument was honoured when Subiaco Oval was the setting for a qualifying final between West Coast and Hawthorn.

Other interstate clubs who subsequently joined the AFL benefitted from the trailblazing Eagles – although the formula for playing finals outside of Melbourne was complicated by a bizarre agreement with the MCG which ruined West Coast’s 1996 campaign, but more about that later.  
Before elaborating on the 1990 season itself, it is also important to examine another critical juncture in West Coast Eagles history. It came after the 1989 campaign with a draft that did so much to shape the club for the Malthouse decade.

Between seasons the West Coast Eagles traded former East Fremantle utility player Peter Wilson in from Richmond, landed Ashley McIntosh as a father-son recruit after the governing body changed the criteria and then drafted, among others, Peter Matera, Tony Evans, Dean Irving, Brett Heady and Dean Kemp. They also picked up Claremont pair Ryan Turnbull and Peter Mann as pre-draft selections.

At the draft, the Eagles were restricted to four selections from Western Australia and they were listed as Matera, Evans, Irving and Heady. But if a Victorian club failed to select from the WA talent pool, the Eagles could take another dip.

Melbourne, Richmond and Geelong all relinquished the opportunity so the Eagles swooped on Kemp, West Perth defender Brad Gwilliam and exciting Claremont midfielder Tony Begovich.

All of those developments were almost as important than the 1990 campaign itself, except that it was a season that ignited the club and generated excitement within WA football.

It was a break-out year for the Eagles as Malthouse, whose intimate knowledge of the opposition, imparted his wisdom and a defensive emphasis on his star-studded group. It didn't mean that his team would focus purely on stuffing the opposition because in the first five weeks the Eagles averaged almost 20 goals.

But it was about respecting the opposition, applying pressure around the football and then using their skill to splice them open. Malthouse had observed that the Eagles were outstanding in time and space, but needed to develop a better ‘inside’ game.

It started with a solid win against Collingwood, but then came a disappointing defeat against St Kilda at Moorabbin, where the perpetual thorn in the side of the Eagles, Tony Lockett kicked nine goals.

After solid wins against Footscray, Carlton and Sydney the Eagles produced a watershed victory against Richmond at the MCG. It was the first time a WA senior team had ever left Australia’s premier sporting venue victorious, the Eagles leading all day on the way to a 35-point win.

The jubilation of the break-through was short-lived as Melbourne restored order a week later, beating the Eagles by 55 points on a day when the visitors were never really in the game.

West Coast won nine of their last 11 games, but only one of those victories came against other clubs that finished in the top five. They beat Hawthorn at the WACA Ground in round 12, but lost to Collingwood (26 points) at Victoria Park in round 14 and Melbourne proved too good in round 20 at Subiaco Oval, eclipsing the Eagles by six goals.

The Melbourne game was not without incident. Indeed tough utility player Dwayne Lamb received a broken left arm after an errant kick from Melbourne star Jim Stynes and there was an ugly incident involving one of the club’s trainers and Demons coach John Northey at three-quarter time.

Defender Peter Melesso was cited on video evidence for ‘assaulting Earl Spalding with his boot’ in the last quarter and received a five game suspension.

The week before getting over the top of Hawthorn, the Eagles lost to Essendon at Windy Hill.