Grim reality behind AFL’s most tragic team, the 2006 West Coast Eagles

The West Coast Eagles were soaring high in 2006, but less than two decades later they’re being remembered for all the wrong reasons.

The West Coast Eagles were the most dominant force in the AFL throughout the 2006 season.

With a line-up that consisted of star players across the board, the Eagles flew high and claimed the club’s third premiership.

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In one of the most iconic grand finals, the Eagles got the better of the Sydney Swans to reverse the fortunes of the year before.

It was a moment of pure ecstasy for the club and those involved in hoisting the premiership cup.

But less than two decades on, the once memorable team is now being looked at as the most tragic side in AFL history.

The Eagles, and the AFL, were left broken hearted on Saturday when news of Adam Selwood’s death came to light.

Adam played 187 games for West Coast after being selected with the 53rd pick in the 2002 AFL Draft. He retired from the game following the 2013 season.

He sadly became the second member of the premiership winning side to pass away after Adam Hunter was found dead in February.

Hunter, 43, played 151 games at the Eagles across eight seasons before hanging up the boots in 2009.

The star utility was found unresponsive in Bunbury, south of Perth, and could not be revived.

West Coast Eagles 2006 premiership side.

While Selwood and Hunter are the most tragic tales from the Eagles side, two other players from the list have attracted far more media attention.

Former Eagles skipper Ben Cousins has found himself under an intense spotlight following a staggering fall from grace.

Cousins played 238 games for the Eagles but was sacked by the club following the 2007 season after he was arrested for drug possession and handed a 12-month suspension by the AFL.

The 2005 Brownlow Medal winner has spent time behind bars on six occasions and has been convicted of stalking and breaching a restraining order taken out by a former partner.

Cousins was on top of the world in 2006. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Cousins arriving at the Fremantle Magistrates Court in 2016 for one of his many court hearings. (AAP Image/Richard Wainwright)

Daniel Kerr has endured an almost similar fall from grace as Cousins with the former midfield star being jailed for two years in 2023 after setting fire to his parents’ home.

The older brother of Matildas icon Sam Kerr, the 220-game Eagle has battled drug addiction while also putting himself on the wrong side of the law.

In March last year he pleaded guilty to persistently engaging in family violence against his ex-partner and mother of his children.

Kerr ultimately avoided jail with Judge Wendy Gillon saying at the time of the offending Kerr was unwell and could not recognise his mental illness, but since his diagnosis he had received regular treatment.

He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in November 2022 after years of mental health and drug issues.

Kerr celebrates with the premiership cup.

Kerr leaving Perth Magistrates Court in 2015 where he faced four charges of breaching a VRO by texting his ex-wife. Picture: Marie Nirme

Former Hawthorn and Eagles star Daniel Chick has also found himself in trouble with the law after receiving multiple fines for drug related offences.

But the 103-game Eagle made headlines in 2015 when he lifted the lid on the 2006 team’s toxic culture of prescription and illicit drug abuse and cover-ups in a bombshell interview.

In the wake of Chick’s revelation, it was revealed in 2017 that the AFL had undertaken an investigation into the club in 2008 which cast a shadow over the club’s heroics in lifting the premiership cup.

The damning 87-page report, exposed by the Herald Sun, by ­retired Victorian Supreme Court judge William Gillard revealed that stated that cocaine, speed, ice, ecstasy and marijuana were abused by Eagles players and that club bosses had adopted a “covering-up approach … without confronting the real cause and seeking to eradicate it”.

So while the Eagles were on top of the world in 2006, the damning reality for the club less than two decades on paints a picture of the most tragic team in AFL history.

Originally published as Grim reality behind AFL’s most tragic team, the 2006 West Coast Eagles