Any way you look at the 2001 season it was an Annus Horribilis. There was no way to put a positive spin on it, no chance of getting it to swivel one way or the other to view its best features. It was a disaster.

While senior coach Ken Judge had the unenviable task of taking over the baton from dual premiership coach Mick Malthouse in 2000 and that was always going to be a tough assignment, it got worse. For him and everyone else attached to the club.

On reflection it was probably the definitive manifestation of there being no short cut to success.

The playing list was devoid of the stars who led the club to premierships in 1992 and 1994 and a whole decade of playing in the finals’ series, albeit with limited impact after the second of those triumphs.

At the end of the 2000 campaign Andrew Donnelly retired, Mitchell White asked for a trade and headed to Geelong and Fraser Gehrig returned to his home State to play with St Kilda. The squad was decimated.

Add to that the forced retirement of co-captain Dean Kemp, who succumbed to a series of head knocks mid-season, and the only seniority within the group with any genuine big game experience were 1992 Norm Smith medallist Peter Matera, 1998 Club Champion Ashley McIntosh, 1996 fairest and best Drew Banfield and champion centre half-back Glen Jakovich.

Of course, there were emerging stars like Ben Cousins, Michael Gardiner, Phil Matera and Chad Morrison, but the list was thin.

In that situation the temptation is to find a quick fix; to bring in some experience from elsewhere to supplement the list. The club decided to go down that path, rather than the tried and proven exercise of building a squad through the draft.

Players like Richard Taylor and Michael Collica (Hawthorn), David Sierakowski (St Kilda), Michael Prior (Essendon), Greg Harding and Trent Carroll (Fremantle) and Mark Merenda (Richmond) all arrived at the club.

All contributed in some form, but with due respect they were not as classy as the men they were lured to replace.

The most successful of them was defender Collica, who played every game in his first season and was runner-up to Cousins in the Club Champion Award.

Sierakowski, unfortunately, damaged his knee in his first game for the club against Geelong at Shell Stadium, so that was a disastrous start at his new club for the versatile big man.

Taylor was a pugnacious midfielder, Prior played wing or half-back while Merenda was a clever half-forward and Harding and Carroll both played in defence. Harding made his way north of the river in the deal that saw Metropolis head south.

It was a season that started poorly, both in an injury sense and the result, down at Geelong, although the upside of the 66 point defeat was the debut of feisty young midfielder Daniel Kerr.

There was a sense that it couldn’t get much worse than that. In essence it didn’t get much better.

The Eagles won just five games for the season and the average losing margin was 61.58 points – a tick over 10 goals. There were a couple of triple figure hidings – 119 points against Carlton in round 10 and 112 points against Port Adelaide at Football Park to finish off a miserable year.

The five victories came against three clubs – the Eagles beat both Fremantle and St Kilda twice and also beat Melbourne. The Saints and Dockers were the only clubs sitting below West Coast at the completion of the season.

There weren’t too many highlights but beating Fremantle a couple of times always gives our fans a little joy, particularly in the first of the derbies in round four. That actually gave the club consecutive victories, having dealt with St Kilda a week earlier, and created some hope around the rest of the campaign.

And the win against the Dockers was a polished performance, running home strongly after scores were level at three-quarter time, to piece together a 24-point win. Michael Gardiner kicked five goals, Banfield contributed three and won the Ross Glendinning Medal as best on ground.

By the time the clubs faced off for the re-match in round 19, the season had disintegrated and Judge was feeling the heat. Almost every week when he ventured into his weekly media conferences the question of his future was raised.

It was a difficult time, but the second win against the Dockers managed to put those testing questions on hold for a week.

The Eagles were in control of this game from the outset, building on their lead at every break on the way to a 34-point win. Merenda was at his best in this match and kicked four goals, with Troy Wilson and Phil Matera also proving lively up forward.

Glen Jakovich won the Ross Glendinning Medal for a sublime performance on Fremantle young gun Matthew Pavlich while Cousins, Kerr and Peter Matera won plenty of the football.

That was the last hurrah for the Eagles, losing the last three games of a disappointing year without offering a lot of resistance against Richmond, Essendon or Port – indeed a 65-point loss to the Tigers was the closest result.

At season’s end all of the speculation around Judge’s future was out to bed when his contract was terminated, despite the fact he still had a couple of years to run. The club then began the process of searching for a replacement.

It was a shattering end to a relationship between coach and club that never quite gelled. It started so well with a great win against North Melbourne in his first season, but there were too many hurdles clipped on the rest of the troubled journey.

Injuries certainly played their part, but even when decimated the club expected bolder showings than those that were produced, particularly when the 17 losses averaged out to a bit more than 10 goals.