Phillip Matera (born 27 November 1975) is a former

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

er.

Career

Beginning his career in 1996, the 171 cm forward pocket was one of the

Australian Football League The Australian Football League (AFL) is the only fully professional competition of Australian rules football. Through the AFL Commission, the AFL also serves as the sport's governing body and is responsible for controlling the laws of the gam ...

's best small forwards. Matera is the brother of former AFL players Peter and Wally, the third of the Matera brothers to player for West Coast. He won the club's goalkicking for the second time in 2002 and his speed and ability to apply pressure often created scoring chances. He hit back strongly after a midseason form slump. In 2003 he was in good form and won

All-Australian The All-Australian team is an all-star team of Australian rules football in Australia, Australian rules footballers, selected by a panel at the end of each season. It represents a complete team, including an interchange bench, of the best-perf ...

selection for the first time after kicking 62 goals. In 2004 he just missed out on All-Australian selection after kicking 61 goals, as the selectors opted to play an extra midfielder. In 2005 injury hampered his input but he still managed to kick 39 goals from 19 games. He was a late withdrawal from the

2005 AFL Grand Final The 2005 AFL Grand Final was an Australian rules football game contested between the Sydney Swans and West Coast Eagles at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 24 September 2005. It was the 109th annual grand final of the Australian Football League ...

due to injury. On 23 November 2005, Matera announced his retirement from

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

football, citing a chronic back injury. Matera retired from all levels of the game effective immediately, and began focusing on his electrical contracting business, which he began in 2003. He was

West Coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...

's most prominent goalkicker for his final years in a team which struggled for quality key-position forwards, scoring 389 goals from 179 games, the fourth-highest number of goals in the club's history. In December 2009, he become an assistant coach at

Claremont Claremont may refer to: Places Australia *Claremont, Ipswich, a heritage-listed house in Queensland * Claremont, Tasmania, a suburb of Hobart * Claremont, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth ** Claremont Football Club, West Australian Footba ...

. Matera has since claimed that he walked away from the game in response to not being selected for the 2005 Grand Final. Coach

John Worsfold John Richard Worsfold (born 25 September 1968) is a former Australian rules football coach and player. He was the senior coach of the Essendon Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) between October 2015 and September 2020. He pr ...

chose the injury prone

Travis Gaspar Travis Gaspar (born 28 March 1981) is a former Australian rules footballer in the Australian Football League. He was recruited as the number 14 draft pick in the 1999 AFL draft from South Fremantle. Gaspar made his debut for the West Coast ...

for the Grand Final, who had only played a single game all season, in spite of Matera giving Worsfold his word that he was fit enough to play.

Statistics

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1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

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1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 19 , , 30 , , 23 , , 182 , , 66 , , 248 , , 74 , , 30 , , 1.6 , , 1.2 , , 9.6 , , 3.5 , , 13.1 , , 3.9 , , 1.6 , , 0 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 14 , , 13 , , 13 , , 93 , , 49 , , 142 , , 32 , , 25 , , 0.9 , , 0.9 , , 6.6 , , 3.5 , , 10.1 , , 2.3 , , 1.8 , , 0 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 24 , , 51 , , 20 , , 188 , , 91 , , 279 , , 66 , , 37 , , 2.1 , , 0.8 , , 7.8 , , 3.8 , , 11.6 , , 2.8 , , 1.5 , , 4 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 19 , , 49 , , 30 , , 164 , , 55 , , 219 , , 57 , , 26 , , 2.6 , , 1.6 , , 8.6 , , 2.9 , , 11.5 , , 3.0 , , 1.4 , , 4 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 16 , , 31 , , 22 , , 111 , , 43 , , 154 , , 48 , , 20 , , 1.9 , , 1.4 , , 6.9 , , 2.7 , , 9.6 , , 3.0 , , 1.3 , , 1 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 21 , , 46 , , 16 , , 136 , , 66 , , 202 , , 63 , , 36 , , 2.2 , , 0.8 , , 6.5 , , 3.1 , , 9.6 , , 3.0 , , 1.7 , , 1 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 19 , , 62 , , 27 , , 136 , , 35 , , 171 , , 53 , , 15 , , 3.3 , , 1.4 , , 7.2 , , 1.8 , , 9.0 , , 2.8 , , 0.8 , , 2 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 23 , , 61 , , 42 , , 155 , , 48 , , 203 , , 65 , , 32 , , 2.7 , , 1.8 , , 6.7 , , 2.1 , , 8.8 , , 2.8 , , 1.4 , , 1 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

, style="text-align:center;", , 33 , , 19 , , 38 , , 28 , , 121 , , 40 , , 161 , , 47 , , 22 , , 2.0 , , 1.5 , , 6.4 , , 2.1 , , 8.5 , , 2.5 , , 1.2 , , 1 , - class="sortbottom" ! colspan=3, Career ! 179 ! 389 ! 227 ! 1316 ! 509 ! 1825 ! 516 ! 249 ! 2.2 ! 1.3 ! 7.4 ! 2.8 ! 10.2 ! 2.9 ! 1.4 ! 14

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Matera, Phillip 1975 births Living people South Fremantle Football Club players Australian people of Italian descent West Coast Eagles players All-Australians (AFL) Australian rules footballers from Western Australia People from Wagin, Western Australia Western Australian State of Origin players Indigenous Australian players of Australian rules football