like a winless season before beating East Fremantle in the seventeenth round. However, during this period every one of the other seven WAFL clubs won at least one premiership. Their only genuinely class player of this era, Gary Buckenara, defected to Hawthorn after three years with the Lions. Worse still, unlike that earlier bleak era, Subiaco were hit by severe financial problems and only community involvement during the early 1980s managed to save the club from extinction. The return of Haydn Bunton junior as coach after a long stint with South Adelaide was viewed by most Subiaco fans as the return of a master, and it is remarkable how he rose a nearly defunct club to a major force in the WAFL. Subiaco moved from four wins to nine in 1984 (along with a reserves premiership) and rose to second behind East Fremantle in 1985. Although it was their first finals appearance since 1974, Subiaco did not disappoint but ultimately failed by five points. However, 1986 saw them even better, beating VFL club St Kilda in the Foster's Cup and losing only four games all year - their second-best home-and-away return behind 1912 - before recovering from a thrashing from East Fremantle to demolish that team in the Grand Final by sixty-nine points. Bunton junior's aim of a Subiaco dynasty was ended by the formation of the West Coast Eagles that summer, which quickly drained the WAFL of all its best talent. Nonetheless, he coached the Lions to another premiership in 1988, and although they did decline to only six wins in 1989 and 1990, Subiaco maintained a respectable position in the weakened WAFL over the next decade, before becoming the richest and most powerful club therein during the 2000s under the coaching of Peter German and Scott Watters with premierships in 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2008 - in the last of which they were amazingly unlucky not to be only the second undefeated team in open-age WAFL history suffering only a one-point loss to Swan Districts. Subiaco would endure a lull after their historic three-peat between 2006 and 2008 before returning to the WAFL Grand Final against Claremont in 2011 under the guidance of ex-West Coast Eagle Chris Waterman. The Lions would be humbled by the Tigers on the day with a 56-point defeat solemnly ending Subiaco's season. The Lions suffered a Grand Final hangover in 2012 free-falling down