There are three points to make in the wake of West Coast’s $11.4 million operating surplus revealed in The West Australian this week.

The first is that the figure is the result of a stunning off-field performance to match an equally stunning on-field performance that netted the club’s fourth premiership in September.

The Eagles are an AFL giant, operating at the absolute height of their powers from their chairman and CEO down.

The second point is that if the figure hasn’t already prompted the start of a philosophical discussion about how much money a rich football club should keep and how much it should distribute, it should have, and if you are wondering why, go to the third point.

Camera Icon Dom Sheed (left) and Elliot Yeo hold the premiership trophy. Credit: AAPIMAGE

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The third point is that if the equalisation-obsessed AFL believes the Eagles are too rich, it will find a way to square the ledger as much as it can.

That may not mean WA money heading east, but it will certainly mean less AFL money heading west in the form of AFL distributions. We have to take care of our own in WA. Eastern States sports administrators certainly can’t be relied upon to take care of us. The lack of a T20 World Cup cricket semifinal at Optus Stadium is one case in point.

Another example? Coming back to football, Treasurer Ben Wyatt wrote to AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan 21 months ago asking that the league make some form of contribution to the capital cost of the taxpayer-funded $1.6 billion stadium project which has made West Coast’s stunning numbers possible. As of Thursday, he had not received a reply.

Camera Icon The Eagles celebrate the 2018 premiership victory. Credit: AAPIMAGE

There is no comment that better sums up the AFL’s attitude to equalisation and fairness than one made more than 20 years ago by then football operations manager Ian Collins that this writer would argue still applies today.

While talking journalists through the league’s interventionist policies Collins was asked if the interference got to a point where it simply wasn’t fair. “Who cares about fair,” he said in slightly blunter and less printable terms. “We just want even.”

West Coast can no longer just be considered the leader of the AFL’s financial pack. It is now an outlier — so far ahead that there is a danger of the Eagles disappearing over the horizon.

That represents both an opportunity for WA football for greater financial support from its biggest club and a potential problem for the AFL. West Coast should take the opportunity before the league moves to solve the problem.

It should be noted that West Coast has already been a very strong supporter of community, WAFL and grassroots football here.

The $3.9 million royalty it is expected to pay to the WA Football Commission after 2018 will take its contributions past $140 million over its 32-year existence. It will be a major sponsor of the fledgling WAFL women’s competition from this year and will boost payments to WAFL clubs to enter a team in that competition in its own right.

But it should also be noted that prior to its $35 million contribution to its own $60 million Lathlain Park facility, the Eagles held more than $60 million in cash and assets.

That is a lot of wealth to build and store for a club wholly owned by the WA Football Commission which in turn has most of its WAFL clubs on the breadline and a raft of challenges at community and grassroots level.

The financial collapse of proud WAFL club West Perth was a brutal reminder of the fine line that WAFL clubs walk.

It must be said that the 4¢ in the dollar settlement creditors are to receive from the Falcons is not a great look for a WA industry that owns a club with millions to spare.

West Coast chairman Russell Gibbs said the question of what to do with the money was one the club was starting to ask itself. Community engagement was the key, he said, and the question was how best to go about it.

Camera Icon Josh Kennedy kisses the 2018 premiership trophy. Credit: AAPIMAGE

But both he and WAFC chief executive Gavin Taylor also warned of the dangers of assuming that 2018 would simply repeat over again financially.

Flags don’t come along every year and this one probably accounted for about $3 million of the $11.4 million surplus.

Add the extra costs of running a state-of-the-art facility, the cost of running a WAFL team and the cost of getting an AFLW team up to speed for 2020 and we were likely to get a better picture of the Eagles true financial position relative to the rest of the AFL in a year or two, the pair said.

“Things are really good, but it doesn’t take much for things not to be really good,” Gibbs said.