Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes has lashed West Coast for its "arrogance" after a disastrous loss against Hawthorn on the weekend.
In a battle of the AFL's cellar-dwellers, the Eagles were demolished by 116 points, the latest episode in the sad demise of one of the league's most powerful clubs.
Just five years after their most recent premiership, the Eagles find themselves facing a lengthy rebuild, one that Cornes forecasted in 2021 before being shot down by Eagles CEO Trevor Nisbett and senior coach Adam Simpson at the time.
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"It speaks to the arrogance of the club," he told Nine's Footy Classified.
"They've had their head in the sand for far too long. Anyone who watches football (could) see that this was where West Coast was going to end up.
"The lack of draft picks, the overpaying of players, the loyalty to those players that just don't play."
Cornes said that while all of the Eagles' problems weren't on Simpson, whose future gets more clouded with every loss, he had to own the lack of standards set.
"He let his players off far too easily, they were unfit, they were overweight, and this is the result that you get when you lose by 116 points to the 18th team on the ladder," he said.
"The amount of times that they (Hawthorn players) broke tackles and waltzed through, it was honestly like an internal trial in February this game yesterday, and they should be embarrassed by it.
"I'm sick of the excuses out of West Coast. 'We're injured', OK for three years your record speaks to a lot more than injuries. This isn't injury, this is effort and this is a team that has essentially given up.
"Adam Simpson, it's not solely his fault, clearly there are other reasons why it's led to this, but ultimately he is the one that will pay the price.
"He won't survive until the end of the year, he can't. No coach in history has survived a record of four wins and 30-odd losses over a two-and-a-half year period."
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The Age's Caroline Wilson suggested the Eagles needed to look outwards to arrest their slide as a football club in recent years.
"They don't listen to anyone outside of their four walls, now they must be starting to," she told Footy Classified.
"They did once before, when the drugs scandal happened, and they came to Melbourne every year, sold themselves to the media, tried to integrate themselves into the wider football scene.
"For a long time they were a new footy club, and now it's happened again."
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