WEST COAST'S previous appearance at the MCG before yesterday had come in round five last year, 13 months ago almost to the day. It produced a 23-point win over Richmond, the fifth of six wins on the trot for the Eagles and clear top spot on the ladder.

Haven't things changed? When the Eagles ran out for a crack at Collingwood yesterday, it was with a team whose stocks, despite a good win over Adelaide last week, could hardly have been in more stark contrast. West Coast was 13th, not top, had won only two of nine games, its coach having long since written off the season, and, of course, was without the two players upon whom so much of its latter-day triumphs had been based, Chris Judd and Ben Cousins.

About 2½ hours later, the Eagles' lot looked bleaker still, having just been thrashed by 100 points, easily their heaviest defeat by Collingwood, conceding seven, seven and eight goals in the final three terms, themselves managing only four in three whole quarters.

Yet when you glanced down the team sheet, not for the first time this season, you couldn't help wondering how things had slipped this far this quickly. It wasn't as though the premiership team of just two seasons ago had been gutted. In fact, no fewer than 13 premiership players were part of yesterday's hiding.

Sure, there were some new faces, the likes of key forward and part of the Judd trade, Josh Kennedy, key defender Beau Wilkes, Brad Ebert, Tim Houlihan and the still-raw Will Schofield. But so was there still the household names, Daniel Kerr, Dean Cox, Andrew Embley, David Wirrpanda and Darren Glass.

Sadly, what the early going yesterday underlined was how, when the bottom falls out of a team's performance and its confidence falls away, even its most senior, steady and highly capable performers can, on occasion, be reduced to error-prone mediocrity.

The tale of woe began with Embley, starting, curiously, in a back pocket on Scott Pendlebury, completely miscueing an attempted chip across goal to Cox. A grateful Paul Medhurst pounced on the spoils, snapped across his body, and the Magpies had their second goal of the afternoon.

The disease soon spread to teammates just as senior and perhaps even more accomplished. No less a star than Kerr got hit by the bug when he finally ventured from a half-forward flank to the midfield.

Grabbing the ball on the defensive side of the centre square, Kerr took a bounce within a couple of steps, hesitated, and was lost, pounced upon by Marty Clarke. The spills fell to Leon Davis, who pumped the ball into the goal square, where Dane Swan promptly marked and goaled.

Things just got worse from there. Collingwood had already extended its lead to 37 points five minutes into the second term when there were two more Eagle clangers from unlikely sources in the one stanza of play, the result a two-goal turnaround.

Adam Selwood had banged the ball into the goal square. Cox was at least 30 metres in the clear, needing just to grab the ball and tap it over the goal line. He fumbled, the ball spilling from his hands on to the goal post, a certain six-pointer somehow bungled.

From the resultant kick-in, Collingwood had the ball at the other end within seconds. In a goal-square scramble, Tyson Stenglein tried to fist the ball through for a rushed behind. He missed, the fingernail eventually laid on the ball only pushing the ball nicely into the path of Alan Didak for another goal.

There were more howlers in the third term, Glass choosing to bump rather than tackle Pendlebury, the Magpie star goaling from the resultant snap, Wirrpanda giving away a silly and unnecessary 50-metre penalty to Tarkyn Lockyer for another gimme.

It was against this background that the Eagle kids soldiered on manfully, Kennedy dragging down seven marks and making another feted youngster in Magpie Nathan Brown work, Wilkes toiling hard on Travis Cloke, losing the battle, but far from disgraced. The highly rated Ebert had his moments as well.

It wasn't like the old West Coast hands stuffed up all day, either. In fact, Cox was one of the best handful of players on the field, finishing with an amazing tally for a man his size of 30 disposals, seven marks, two goals and 36 hitouts, 15 more than the entire Collingwood ruck division.

But the Eagles' stars never got the chance to do anything other than fight back the Collingwood tide, repelling rather than creating, the Magpies on the back foot for no more than a 10-minute burst in the second quarter.

Just over a year ago, the sight of Kerr, Cox, Embley and co charging on to the MCG turf was a sight to instil fear in opponents and awe in onlookers. Now, after thrashings such as yesterday's, it's more one to inspire sympathy.