How the West won: The inside story of a WA dynasty

On the first Monday of last April, as the shadows lengthened across the WACA Ground and the post-match formalities of the 2021-22 Marsh Sheffield Shield final had long since faded away, Christina Matthews was quietly basking in the afterglow of all that had been achieved.

A drought-breaking Shield success had rounded out a treble of triumphs for the WACA that summer. Matthews had been in the chief executive position a tick over 10 years at that point, and in her mind's eye, she could see the through line from those formative days to this history-making moment.

A grinning Shaun Marsh sidled up alongside her, and articulated one part of exactly what she had been thinking.

"He threw his arm around me," Matthews recalls, "and he said, 'You know why we're successful, Chris?'

"I said, 'Tell me, Shaun?'

"He said, 'Because we've got good people'."

A year later, they were there again – Matthews another year into her remarkable tenure, Marsh having just retired – this time having witnessed the final part of a history-making defence of all three domestic trophies, courtesy of victory over Victoria in the Shield final.

The pair's shared history stretches back to Matthews' appointment in December 2011, when Marsh was already more than a decade into what would become a record-breaking WA career.

Ironically in retrospect, his immaturity at the time, as well as that of his younger brother Mitchell, among others, helped set in motion what Matthews looks back on as a seminal shift early in her time as CEO.

After the Scorchers finished runners-up in the inaugural BBL season, their subsequent 2012 T20 Champions League campaign in South Africa was beset by ill-discipline off the field and poor results on it, with the brothers Marsh axed from the final match.

The public condemnation arrived quickly from Cricket Australia – and notably CA chairman Wally Edwards, a former WA player and WACA board member – with none-too-subtle intimations that cultural change was long overdue at the WACA.

Within a fortnight, coach Lachie Stevens and captain Marcus North had resigned from their posts, while Mitchell Marsh was pointedly overlooked for Australia A selection and Shaun was dropped from the Shield side.

Matthews, who in May that year had made her first key appointment with the acquisition of Ben Oliver as WA cricket operations general manager, opted to view the crisis as an opportunity.

Highly-respected figures Simon Katich and Adam Voges were given the captaincy reins of the Scorchers and WA respectively, while another state legend, Justin Langer, became the preferred candidate for head coach.

On November 15, just three weeks after they had crashed out of the Champions League, Langer was unveiled in the position.

Image Id: 4863DB8608224248866C4DBB40ACD0CE Image Caption: CEO Christina Matthews views the appointment of Langer as a pivotal moment in the state's turnaround // Getty

"We were able to bring Justin in, and from my point of view, that meant I knew I had myself, the high performance (led by Oliver), and the coach all on the same page about what we wanted to achieve on and off the field," Matthews reflects.

"That was based on good characters, good behaviour, and a strong sense of values, with a view to driving sustainable success."

Langer quickly made his intentions clear. In his inimitable way, the 105-Test great talked about 'character over cover drives', and began building the foundations for long-term success through five key principles and values: work hard, speak honestly, earn respect, celebrate success and respect the past.

"We were at rock bottom when Justin took over," remembers Voges. "The way he turned the program around was incredible."

Across the next six seasons, the WACA took home five trophies (three BBL titles, two one-day cup titles) and played in two Shield finals, drawing both but failing to get their hands on the silverware.

In the final summer of Langer's tenure, and having just played one of the finest hands of his career during the 2017-18 Ashes, Shaun Marsh paid tribute to his coach's influence.

"I probably needed a kick up the arse when 'JL' (Langer) first took over (as WA coach), and he's certainly helped me away from cricket," he said in December 2017.

"Every now and then I'd let myself down a little bit. Definitely there was a change of attitude in making sure I didn't leave any stone unturned, knuckled down … he's played a significant role in my career."

Langer's impact would be felt beyond the WA borders within six months, with his appointment as head coach of Australia's men's team following another controversy in South Africa, which this time around led to the resignation of Darren Lehmann from that post.

In Perth, the chain reaction was immediate, with a well-considered succession plan needing to be fast-tracked. On May 30, 2018, not four months after playing his final game for the Scorchers, Voges was announced as Langer's replacement.

"It certainly advanced things," Matthews remembers, "and in Adam's case, being put in there to coach was probably a year in advance of where we thought we would have developed him to.

"(The plan was to) have him involved and doing some work with Justin, and that didn't roll out.

"And of course, he was one year less removed from being a player, which is always the biggest challenge; moving from captain to coach is a massive change in your relationship with the players.

"So it wasn't anything we didn't expect – it was just a year earlier than we expected.

"But the positive thing about our environment is we're always looking forward to what is going to be the next move, and five years down the track, it's obviously worked out alright."

* * *

Voges was "mentally and physically spent" after his first season in charge. WA missed the Shield and one-day finals but more alarmingly, the Scorchers slipped from first to last in the BBL regular season, winning just four of 14 matches to miss the finals for the first time.

"I just remember at times thinking, We've been so successful. I don't want to be the bloke who's in charge when we don't make finals or finish bottom of the table," he says. "It was a tough period."

In April, Voges met with Matthews and Oliver, who was only months away from taking a high-performance role at Cricket Australia.

"I was exhausted," he says. "I'd burnt myself out halfway through the season, trying to do too much too quickly; trying to manage what my job looked like, what my home life looked like, and probably not quite getting that balance right.

"Chris just looked at me and said, 'Oh, you need a month off'. It was a very casual line with the way she said it, but she was spot on."

The time away was the first of three key moves for Voges through 2019. Having regularly received counsel from long-time friend and mentor Bob Meuleman, he was able to better digest some valuable lessons from that difficult first summer. He became more conscious of his daily interactions with players – "what to say and when to say it, and what not to say" – and sought to better understand how he ticks in pressure situations ("becoming a lot more external in those times, rather than being buried in my own thoughts too much") which in turn allowed him to work on methods to control his emotions in those moments.

"I was learning on the job, and I was doing that in a high-pressure environment, so I had to learn pretty quickly," Voges says. "There were lots of those little learnings along the way, and then with selection and list management – particularly because we lost a number of senior players from our Scorchers list at the time – there were some big learnings early on around how to manage those situations."

While externally Voges had become a lightning rod for the Scorchers' surprising tumble down the competition ladder, inside the WACA there was a more nuanced view of the situation.

"When we lost Justin, we lost a really strong leader of our program," says Kade Harvey, the former WA allrounder who was an assistant coach alongside Geoff Marsh through Voges' maiden season, and who would soon replace Oliver as WA's new head of high performance.

"But we also lost Adam as our captain, which I think people probably underestimate, and from a Big Bash point of view, we changed our home ground (from the WACA Ground to Optus Stadium).

"They were three big changes that maybe people didn't give us the time to work through. Internally, we certainly felt that we were still on the right path."

During the middle of the year, Voges headed to the UK as part of the Australia A coaching staff in the build-up to the Ashes. It was a professional development experience but also a chance to tap into the mind of Langer, who was in charge of Australia's World Cup campaign but keeping tabs on the Australia A tour ahead of that year's Ashes.

"To be able to just chat to him," Voges reflects, "knowing that he knew the group and the program intimately, was important."

Image Id: D5D63C0B4DB84761B4D5A585A3B5649D Image Caption: Voges says WA Cricket was at 'rock bottom' when Langer took over in 2012 // Getty

Upon his return, Voges joined the WA men's coaching and playing group for a pre-season camp on Rottnest Island. Harvey looks back on it as a decisive few days in drawing a line under the Langer Era, and ushering in the Voges Era.

"People are naturally resistant to change, especially when you've had some success, but there were some things we needed to go through, and it was all about, 'How do we go to the next level?'" he says.

"At that stage, we hadn't won Shields and there were things we wanted to get better at.

"The hardest thing we did was move on from the values that Justin had brought in. They were so good for the time, and they still have merit every day … but we felt like we needed to change – for want of a better term – the words on the wall; it was very hard to look at those words and not just think of Justin every time.

"We needed to create an identity for this group in their own way, and certainly for Adam as a coach. We went over to Rottnest Island, and we thrashed out what that might look like. I was really strong on Adam taking ownership of that, so it was reflective of him.

"And what the group came up with was: 'trust, humility and committed'."

Image Id: EF6FEC07E34E4DE8A8C1A507C45BE6A1 Image Caption: Kade Harvey (middle) has played a key role in the WACA's coaching and high performance // Getty

It was a core set of values by which the group agreed they would live as people and cricketers.

Harvey elaborates: "The 'humility' bit is a huge piece of Adam as a person, and it's a huge piece of how we want our players to carry themselves; that they never think they're bigger than the game, and they're always looking to learn and be respectful of their roles in the community."

"'Committed' was a piece to the puzzle around, the players move in so many different circles these days, they're asked to play for so many different teams, and we just ask them when they are with us, they are committed to being WA cricketers first. So you come to the WACA in your WA kit, and you're committed to staying present in our program, and not being distracted by the things going on around the world. That's getting even more relevant now.

"The 'trust' bit is about earning trust, but also being able to look each other in the eye and trust that we've done the hard work.

"There's a whole heap of things around those three words that were a bit of a shift from what we had with Justin. It certainly didn't mean that (previous tenets) are any less relevant or important, but we felt like we needed to make a move that created this group's own identity."

Prior to heading to Rottnest Island, Voges talked to Langer about his plans, not as a means of seeking permission, but as another aspect of their regular exchanges, in which the new coach often looked for advice.

"'JL' was great," he says. "The only thing he said was, 'Just make sure they're not (just) words on the wall'."

* * *

Voges had an ace up his sleeve as his coaching journey unfolded. It came into full effect at the beginning of the 2020-21 summer, when an injury cloud hovering over Mitch Marsh meant Ashton Turner took charge for the duration of BBL|10.

Turner was 27 at the time, had played a remarkable match-winning ODI innings in India nine months earlier, and had matured into a thoughtful and articulate presence within the WACA set-up. He possessed significant leadership aspirations, and had been Scorchers vice-captain in 2017-18 and captain sporadically thereafter, generally in the absence of Marsh.

The timing was perfect. Voges remembers the first 17 days of that 2020-21 tournament – during which the Scorchers lost their four matches – as a period when the blowtorch was at its most intense. After a wooden spoon and a sixth-placed finish in the two seasons prior, the winless start left fans and media heavily critical, particularly when a line-up featuring Turner, Mitch Marsh, Jason Roy, Liam Livingstone, Colin Munro and Josh Inglis was skittled for 94 amid a thumping loss in Adelaide.

'Pressure builds on misfiring Scorchers', ran one headline, which typified the sentiment for a side that, since Langer's departure, had won just 10 of 32 matches.

"That was probably when I felt the most pressure," Voges says. "But equally, I had more clarity around what our program was doing and how we were going about it.

"I actually thought we were heading in the right direction, so there was light at the end of the tunnel, which was important."

Image Id: E495FB94689D43D68C29418632A5D650 Image Caption: Voges with Turner in December 2020, when the coach says he was feeling most under pressure // Getty

Voges' faith was well placed. Under Turner's leadership, the Scorchers turned their season around, losing just one of their next 10 matches to finish second on the ladder, and eventual runners up to Sydney Sixers. The new skipper, a former Australia U19 captain, had been self-assured, tactically versatile, and calm in a crisis – traits that would come to define him.

Upon the exit of Langer, there had been conversations between Matthews, Harvey and Voges regarding how to most effectively fill the significant leadership vacuum he had left. They determined the best approach would be to split those duties between not only themselves but the players; crucially, they understood that what had been a young set of players under Langer was transitioning into a different phase of their careers and lives, and were ready to take on leadership roles themselves.

Resources were put in place to assist these developing minds, and particularly Turner, who was active in the space on his own time as well. The WACA hired an external leadership consultant – a former military man, Colonel Bruce Willis – to be a touchpoint for a new leadership group, which has been operating for four or five years and has at different times numbered as many as eight or nine senior players and coaches.

"We meet intermittently, and it's a space for us to challenge ourselves, and it's a space for us to be held accountable as well," Turner says.

"My experience of professional sport is that often we sit down and write down goals for our cricket-specific skills: What do I want to achieve as a batsman this year? What do I want to achieve as a bowler, as a fielder? How am I going to achieve those outcomes? What are the measures I'm going to put in place?

"But rarely have I seen leadership put under the same microscope. That's something that we've done in Western Australia for the last couple of years now … and it's been a great addition to our planning and our preparation."

From Harvey's perspective, it was an important piece of the puzzle. With regular Shield captain Mitchell Marsh often away with international duties, and injury and strong competition for places limiting Turner's red-ball involvement as well, the idea of a broad set of leaders in the group made sense.

It was in the leadership group that the once unlikely captaincy figures of Shaun Marsh and Sam Whiteman emerged.

"That was probably the biggest area that we looked at for growth two years ago, and probably (an area) we were worried, as to who would step in if these guys (Mitch Marsh, Turner) weren't around," Harvey says. "And it's also (about) capturing these guys at the right times of their life. Shaun's become really comfortable in his own skin … and it was the right time in his career to have a role like that; (captaincy) probably isn't something that's always sat overly comfortably with him. But he did a magnificent job.

"There's a calmness and simplicity to the way Shaun played his cricket that resonates with our players, and Sam's very similar in that sense – they don't speak a lot, but when they do they're listened to, and they've got the ability, like Ashton, to bring the best out of the players around them."

Whiteman, who spent around 40 Shield matches wicketkeeping and almost subconsciously absorbing the leadership behaviours and tactical nous of first slip Voges, believes a greater focus on leadership has been instrumental in the success that has since arrived in red-ball cricket.

"That's been a pretty big part of the shift in WA Cricket over the last few years," the 31-year-old says. "The coaches and performance staff identified a couple of years ago … that the senior players need to talk more, and lead more, so that's something that's slowly been put in place. These days, it happens quite naturally, but it took a fair bit of work to get to that point.

"For myself, a few years ago I still felt like I was one of the younger players in the team and didn't quite have the experience to speak up, so it was coming to the realisation that I've played a hell of a lot of cricket over the years, and it was my sort of turn to be one of the senior voices and use my experience a bit to help others."

Image Id: 7ABF986FBC924973AE721F0ADDB29C91 Image Caption: Sam Whiteman has emerged from the WACA's leadership program to become a Shield winning captain // Getty

Turner, who has completed a graduate certificate of high-performance sport leadership, is currently studying an MBA that offers aspects of leadership learning, and is about to undertake a program in which he will mix with a diverse set of leaders from different fields with a view to further developing his own capabilities, also saw the need for the WACA men's leadership model to shift with the changing needs of the players.

"One of the big aspects of motivation amongst individuals is, how much autonomy can you give an individual?" he explains. "And the more you can increase the autonomy, the more buy-in you'll get, and the more motivated and committed individuals will be."

He cites the example of what he describes as a typically long and laborious cricket pre-season. Turner felt the experienced player group had earned the trust of the coaching and high-performance staff with regards to their pre-season routines – where they do it, when they do it – which he believed would create not only a preferred working environment, but a greater sense of autonomy, in turn leading to a more committed approach and also, greater accountability.

"If you want to do your gym session at your local gym because you've got other mates there, can we have scope for that to be OK?" he says.

"Everyone's got their own program, it's in our Athlete Monitoring System (an app on their phones). For some of the young guys, it's different, they need to be in front of the coaches, and there's also great value in the team being together and everyone training at the same time at the WACA.

"But if this drags on for a long period, can we do it another way?

"That trust isn't built overnight but I feel like it can be a win both for the individuals and then hopefully the group as well."

It is a small point in a broader leadership shift that Turner, in concert with Voges, has looked to ingrain at the WACA.

"There's probably a misconception in elite sport that if you have a 'player-led team', then that's actually easier for the players, because we can now do whatever we want, and no-one's going to hold us to account.

"I actually think the opposite is true. If you want to have a 'player-led team', you're increasing the responsibility of all the players, you've actually got more work to do, and the most difficult thing is, for it to work really efficiently, you've got to hold each other to account.

"So if we decide we want to train at nine o'clock, you need to hold your mates to account – if someone doesn't make the nine o'clock bus, or someone's not living the values we decided were going to lead our team in the right direction, all of a sudden, it's you that's got to have a difficult conversation with your mate, and you're not leaving it up to someone else."

Image Id: 3A1B346B019F4178985A35947ABD141C Image Caption: Turner has established himself as one of Australian cricket's finest leaders // Getty

Turner's philosophy has been supported by the higher-up leadership trio of Matthews, Voges and Harvey, with other moving parts in the program now working around it.

It soon became clear that the next emerging group of players – Aaron Hardie, Cameron Green and Lance Morris among them – would require development in key areas through different means, which is why 'the Hussey Group' was created. Last year, the 'Devine Group' was added to the women's program.

"And the names chosen there are quite deliberate," Matthews points out. "Not only two outstanding cricketers (Mike Hussey and Sophie Devine), but two excellent people who have contributed significantly to the organisation in different ways, and who have also characterised our values."

"It's a program that was initiated by (former WACA men's team psychologist) Matt Burgin," explains Harvey. "(It has) made a huge impact on our program, how we develop our athletes and how we help them prepare to be professional people; it's not really a cricket program, it's a life program around how we develop their skills off the field, which then hopefully flows through to on field.

"We roll the (Hussey and Devine) programs out mainly through the winter, for our first-to-third-year players. A lot of these young players are at important times in their life in learning, so we feel like we've got a role to play in helping them develop some of those skills and provide a more rounded education as they come into the system."

Allrounder Hardie, 24, has been identified as one of the squad's bright young leaders, having come into the WACA set-up five years ago as one of four rookie-contracted players.

"Matt (Burgin) took that group under his wing and nursed us through those first couple years to give us the best chance to do well," Hardie says.

"Every week he'd bring in cuttings out from the newspaper, some little snippet of maybe a good example of leadership, a bad example, a good example of sportsmanship … little things like that … he had a big emphasis on journalling, using diaries, getting into good habits, all that sort of stuff to approach things holistically.

Image Id: 72348A664ABD4CB5AF3BD697D1C77B36 Image Caption: Aaron Hardie has benefited from the WACA's 'people first' culture // Getty

"Some days we wouldn't talk about cricket at all. We'd talk about things like, 'Are you keeping in contact with friends from outside of cricket? Are you keeping in contact with your schoolmates? How are the university studies going? Have you gone and seen your mum and dad this week? Those sorts of things."

At the same time, the WACA philosophy (enabled by incredible depth, which was underlined last season when not a single player appeared in all three winning finals) has been to drip feed this young talent into professional cricket.

Harvey cites Turner, Jhye Richardson and Hardie as early examples in the Big Bash, with the latter then impressively stepping up and taking on the No.3 role for the Scorchers amid a shocking run of injuries this summer. Teenage pair Cooper Connolly and Teague Wyllie have both been slowly introduced to teams across the past 12 months, generally surrounded by more experienced batters in the order before stepping up in responsibility themselves. And even before debuting, there are factors that help ensure they are adequately prepared.

"Something (the WACA is) really good at is involving the young players – whether they're rookie contracted players or the best players from the U17s and U19s – in training sessions and just around the group as much as possible," Hardie says. "They then see the hard work everyone puts in and they try to replicate that.

"So when you do step onto the playing field, you know the guys, you know that the work they've done has put them in the positions they're in, so if you've done the same work, you'll be ready to go as well."

* * *

Batting and spin coach Beau Casson arrived at the WACA in 2019 from Cricket NSW and was quickly impressed by the clarity of Matthews' vision.

"And everyone was wholeheartedly jumping on the bus to go in that direction," Casson says. "That was something that certainly stood out, with huge positives."

One key aspect of Matthews' vision was the Sheffield Shield, which had become the 20-year-old monkey on the back of the WACA organisation to the point that, feeling secure in their white-ball foundations despite significant hiccups through that period, there was a deliberate shift in focus towards attaining the elusive silverware.

"Part of our skill development in the background was building a group of pace bowlers, which would get us through the longer format," Harvey says. "We've also looked at our ability to play spin, and our ability to play east coast wickets.

"We've had a fantastic group of skills coaches over the last couple of years in Beau Casson, Matthew Mason, Tim McDonald, Wes Robinson and Geoff Marsh who have gone about developing our players with the longer format in mind."

Harvey describes Casson as being "a huge part of our success over the last few years in terms of unlocking the capacity and potential of a lot of our players".

"He drives our training standards, he drives a lot of what we do from a skill development point of view, and he's built some very trusting relationships with the players that we're bearing the fruit of," he adds.

"It's guys like Beau who are the backbone of how we've gone about it."

Image Id: A329393D0BD2494FBFF239D2D823A15D Image Caption: Beau Casson (middle) has been a major addition to the WA coaching set-up // Getty

As well as the technical aspects of his role with the batting group, Casson considered strategic and mental factors in his planning, and viewed those elements through the lens of the WACA's limited-overs successes.

"So that could be looking at the playing group at our disposal and marrying up how matchwinners might go with the accumulators," he explains, "but also how you can break some of the shackles of, 'You can't play a certain way in red-ball compared to white-ball'."

Casson saw that in the 2021-22 red-ball performances of dashing white-ball star Josh Philippe, and this season it was reflected in both the white-ball form of Bancroft – who has also been working again with Langer – and the fluency with which the opener has been able to score his runs at times in the Shield (his season-high 176no against Tasmania came at a strike-rate of 62, versus a career mark of 43).

The 40-year-old stresses the importance of reinforcing key batting tenets, such as providing role clarity to a player, and being able to put pressure back on a bowler.

"And we know if we're being proactive as a batting group, you have better positions defensively," he adds, "but if you're tentative and not looking to move the game forward and actually apply some pressure, you don't have as many places to go."

Whiteman recalls being a beneficiary of this at the start of the summer, when a lean start to the season came to a head with a pair against Queensland on a green seamer at the WACA Ground.

"He noticed that I was often looking to leave the ball first and then play it if I had to," he says. "He just reminded me that you've got to look to score in cricket, and when you're looking to hit the ball, your feet move into better positions, and you end up reacting and being able to leave the ball better anyway.

"We did some work in the nets that week – and your mindset just shifts a bit when you're looking to be positive – and then I got some runs (193 v South Australia) that week, which was pleasing."

Casson is quick to deflect praise away from himself and onto Voges and the environment he has created. Along much the same lines as the evolution of Turner (in fact, the pair exchange leadership contacts and readings), he has witnessed the head coach's commitment to and genuine interest in professional development.

"Adam took his time to place his fingerprints over what the cultural shift needed to be and the way the side needs to play its cricket, and I think that's a sign of a good leader," he says. "Looking at other organisations, (with regard to) coaches, they say, 'Walk the floor' (which means): get out amongst the people, get a clear understanding of the direction you want to take the group, and, are you getting all the necessary information to actually start to put that vision into play?

"I think that's something Adam certainly did. He took his time, but every year it's gotten more and more along the lines of the way that he perceives the group going about it.

"While everyone's an individual, there are certainly some guidelines, and he's been a beacon for the players to follow."

And as per his predecessor's advice, Voges has been continuing to ensure the group's values are not simply words on a wall.

"There are lots of little things we do (to instil those values)," he says. "Whether that's a jacket presentation for someone who we feel is displaying the values we're looking for, or an in-game acknowledgement, or calling out something we don't think is quite where we want it to be.

"And it's in the language that you use, whether in reviews of games, or just day-to-day conversations with players and staff."

More broadly, the values are fundamental to the lessons learned in the Hussey and Devine groups, and they trickle down from the behaviours exhibited by those in the leadership group.

Hardie was 20 when the group went to Rottnest Island for that defining pre-season experience in 2019, and he remembers it well, not just for the three words that formed the basis of a new era but also a trademark for WA Cricket that they landed on: With our family, for the West, we succeed.

"Those values were drilled into us, but not in a negative way," says Hardie. "It was like, 'If everyone can start to learn and live by these values, then we're going to enjoy playing with each other, we're going to represent Western Australia really well, and if we do all these things well, then this is what we think is going to lead to success'."

* * *

Turner believes he and his contemporaries – the likes of Whiteman, Bancroft, Mitch Marsh, Matt Kelly, Josh Inglis and Ashton Agar, among others – have reached the "end stage" of their time together, with the only question now being just how long they can sustain their success.

"I believe in the lifecycle of teams, and if you peel that back another layer, the lifecycle of individuals," he says. "When you have a young, say immature, team or individual, you need strong leadership (because) you need to learn how to be an elite athlete – how to develop your skills, how to be a professional – and in our game, that needs to come from the staff.

"So I was very fortunate that as a young player, I was exposed to some really strong leaders – Adam and Simon Katich as captains, and Justin Langer as coach – and that was a perfect environment for me and a lot of other guys my age.

"But then as you grow, and as you mature, the needs of the relationship between the individuals and the leadership need to change. And as you start to earn more trust and respect, then the autonomy of the player goes up, and the responsibilities of the leadership slash coaching staff probably go down.

"And that's the relationship that Adam and I have now. It wasn't always this way, but I feel like over time he's been able to give me a longer leash and have more of a say, and voice my thoughts and opinions, and essentially now help run the team.

"It doesn't feel so much like there's a hierarchy anymore; it feels like it's a collaborative approach from several of us to try and achieve the best outcomes for the team.

"I think we're seeing the end stage of the lifecycle of a team, and ideally, that's lots of silverware. That feels like the window we're in now. We know it's very difficult in elite sport to sustain this forever, but while we're in this period, we're going to enjoy it and we're going to try and be as successful as we possibly can."

Image Id: E8FEB0EFD40341D085D2B0F49683E14B Image Caption: Turner and Voges have taken a collaborative approach to leadership // Getty

Along the way, Turner adds, the group has been blessed by something else: fortuitous timing.

"To start at the same time that 'JL' took over, I don't think there's a better coach for 18-22-year-olds in the world, and we owe our success to those foundation years with him as coach," he says. "Then as he moved on, and 'Vogesy' took over, he really catered to a different group, and he had a really different approach that was, again, perfect for that stage of our careers.

"So in a sense I think we've been very lucky to be able to get those timings right, but at the same time, you can't actually attribute luck to what's happened, because a lot of it is by design."

A relative latecomer to the WACA party, Casson echoes Turner's sentiment that this period of unprecedented success hasn't been simply a happy accident.

"Justin certainly got the show on the road from a cricketing point of view," he says. "After he took over, the players had clear guidelines of the expectations of what it took to be, one a professional cricketer, and two, a Western Australian professional cricketer, and (from observing after) coming into that later, this group had a lot of those traits (from) when Justin looked after them.

"And then on the back of that, I feel Christina and Kade, and the hiring of Adam, allowed that to continue, but then through Adam's experience in the role, every year they started to portray more of his behaviours and habits, and that's what's been really wonderful to watch.

"I don't believe that's by chance. I've no doubt those two very intelligent people at the top (Matthews and Harvey) had a clear idea of what direction they wanted to take the group and the organisation, things were put in place, and we're starting to see the fruits of that."