West Coast chairman Paul Fitzpatrick says he wants the banner to return, injury experts might find nothing

West Coast chairman Paul Fitzpatrick has admitted he prefers a banner over the inflatable Eagle tunnel amid calls to revive the pre-game tradition. Fitzpatrick also warned the experts looking into the club’s injury crisis might not bring about the answers the fans and critics are expecting. The West Australian reported on Thursday fans had been calling for the Eagles to bring back the banner for players to run through and ditch the tunnel they’ve used at home games since moving to Optus Stadium in 2018. A poll conducted by this newspaper also showed that 94 per cent of the public wanted to revive the tradition, with star defender Jeremy McGovern throwing his support behind the cause this week. And Fitzpatrick agreed with the majority of fans, but said it was unlikely to return. “Gary Stocks (communications manager) is gonna kill me for saying this, but I like the banner,” Fitzpatrick told ABC Grandstand. “Having said that, it’s been explained to me that there are reasons why we don’t have the banner. Environmentally, the banner is not as good as, the tunnel that we’ve got. “The thin plastic that’s used to create the banner is not allowed to be used in Western Australia anymore. And the feedback from younger members is they preferred the tunnel. But I’m a banner person myself.” Earlier this week, Fitzpatrick revealed they’d called in experts to look into what is behind their enormous amount of injuries, with 18 players named in their medical report on Tuesday. Coach Adam Simpson played it down in his press conference on Thursday, saying it was something every club undertook. Fitzpatrick said they may not get any answers from the investigation by the experts. “What we’re doing is talking to outside people about the sorts of injuries, particularly the soft injuries that we’ve had this year,” Fitzpatrick said. “People talking about sports science, I’m not sure it’s correct to call it a science. So you might not get any answers. The answers might not be clear. “I think in terms of training elite athletes, there is no definite right or wrong answer. “We started talking to external people this year when we started getting the cluster of hamstring injuries. We’ve talked to a number of people who are knowledgeable on hamstring injuries and how to prevent them and looked at our training methods to see whether there’s anything that we’re doing that has resulted in this cluster of hamstring injuries. “There will be theories. I don’t think there’s any precise answer, I don’t think we’d ever be able to go back to our members and say, well, here’s the answer. This is it. It just doesn’t work that way.”