Jezza’s Journal: West Coast Eagles’ Jeremy McGovern on that goal line controversy and the growing injury list

West Coast Eagles vice-captain Jeremy McGovern is keeping his home town in the loop during this unprecedented AFL season. Read Jezza’s Journal every Thursday in the Advertiser. There has been plenty happening in hub life over the past week. Firstly, the close loss to the Western Bulldogs hurt. Both teams had a bit of momentum at stages but they came over the top of us late and they probably deserved to win. We lacked supply, we kicked goals when we went inside but we just couldn’t get it in our forward half enough. There was a bit of controversy in the result. For me, the decision has been made and you can’t do too much now. I tried to touch the ball before it went across the line and I believe I did but I couldn’t convince the umpires and those looking at the review that I had touched it. These things happen — some decisions go your way and some don’t. It’s just footy. My opinion on the score-review system is that if we are going to go upstairs and check something, they need to make a decision otherwise there is no point. If we go upstairs, it has to come back as a definitive yes or no, not just say there is insufficient evidence and we revert back to umpires’ call. If we can’t do that, then I believe we should back the umpires and leave it to the umpires’ initial decision. Unfortunately, I injured my same thumb and I was worried that it was broken again. Thankfully, it was just dislocated and I’ll strap it up and get on with it. It’s like anything; you have to play through a bit of pain and I’m not the only guy carrying a little niggle. We have reviewed the loss on Sunday and moved on quickly to the Saints clash tonight. There is never a right time for injuries. We’ve been hit with a few injuries in succession and lost some quality but it’s a sign of the footy club if you can cover them. It’s also exciting for the guys coming in, they get an opportunity and we put our faith in them to come into our system and perform. You can look at the negatives of being without Jack Redden, Luke Shuey and Elliott Yeo out there but a guy like Hamish Brayshaw has worked extremely hard to get an opportunity in the last couple of years. The silver lining in all of this has been the development in young guys like Liam Duggan, Tom Barrass, Tom Cole and Dom Sheed, who are maturing and emerging as the next group of leaders. If we win the last two, hopefully we can sneak into the top four but we’ll just focus on what we can control. The Saints are an up-and-coming side that has matched it with the best. We’ll have our hands full but I back the boys in and it’s going to be a great contest. After the final game of the regular season against North Melbourne, we are trying to come home for a week or two and be in quarantine. The finals series and where we will play depends on ladder position, so there is a lot of unknowns around possibly coming home. Finally, a fantastic achievement for our footy club to have more than 100,000 members. It is the first time we have topped the membership tally with a figure of 100,776 and Richmond are the only other team to surpass 100,000. Now we need to make the members proud with a big few weeks on the field.