Chris Mainwaring
Debut: Round 3, 1987 v Sydney
Games: 201

Achievements: Premiership player 1992, 1994; rookie of the year 1987; Club Champion runner-up 1989, 1992, 1996; top 10 in Club Champion Award seven times; VFL Team of the Year 1987; All-Australian 1991, 1996; WA captain 1991 (Australian champions); selected in West Coast Eagles Team of the Decade and Team 20; inducted into the WA Football Hall of Fame 2005


The career of champion wingman Chris Mainwaring was motoring along nicely until he backed into a pack of oncoming players in the round two clash with Geelong at Kardinia Park in 1997.

That split-second decision, which was instinctively fearless as in true trademark Mainwaring fashion, changed his life forever.

To that stage, Mainwaring was in a neck-and-neck struggle with Guy McKenna in the race to be the first West Coast player to achieve 200 games, but the impact of that collision and a subsequent knee reconstruction saw Mainwaring play just eight more games over two years.

A tireless wingman, Mainwaring had to that point finished in the top 10 of the Club Champion Award seven times and was three times runner-up.

A dual premiership player, for many the defining moment of the 1992 triumph was Mainwaring ecstatically jumping off the interchange bench to celebrate the final siren.

He was on the sidelines, rather than in the middle of the action, because of a serious ankle injury, but that did not prevent him from launching himself into the air in jubilation.