ON the night Mark LeCras played the game of his life, even “lunatic” coaching tactics couldn’t slow his charge as the sharpshooter blasted Essendon with his record-breaking bag of 12 goals.

For John Worsfold — whose 348 games are more than any current AFL coach — LeCras on the Saturday night of round 16, 2010, at Etihad Stadium was the closest thing to footballing perfection he has witnessed.

Worsfold described it as an odd game to coach where “you sit back and applaud it”.

Eight years on and in the wake of LeCras’ retirement this week, the former West Coast coach revealed his shock at half-time that night as forwards coach Peter

Sumich suggested taking LeCras out of the forward line to start the third quarter.

“He had seven at half-time and Suma was saying, ‘I want to start him on the wing’. And I’m going, ‘Suma, he’s on fire. Why would you want to start him on the wing?’,” Worsfold said. “And he said, ‘I don’t want him to get ahead of himself and I want him to know it’s not just about him’.

“So we started him on the wing after half-time. Not for long mind you, but he would have sat down at half-time and seen his name on the wing and I can imagine him thinking what the hell are these lunatics doing?”

LeCras’ dazzling haul of 12.2, which inspired the struggling Eagles to end a seven-game losing streak, remains the record at the indoor Docklands venue.

Following the match, Sumich described the performance as the greatest from a forward in West Coast’s history, eclipsing Scott Cummings’ 14-goal return against Adelaide in 2000 and Sumich’s own 13 goals against Footscray in 1991.

“I think that performance just outweighs ours. To have a small forward kick 12 goals, I don’t know if we’ll see that too often,” Sumich said.

LeCras revealed he had never even broken the 10-goal mark as a junior.

“It obviously felt a bit different to a normal game, but I wouldn’t say I felt unstoppable,” he said.

Worsfold said the laid-back LeCras, then 23, didn’t change in the wake of his spectacular outing.

“He’s quite a shy, introverted person. He loves just going fishing and being out doing that,” he said.

“He probably never thought he was going to kick 12, but he wouldn’t have been surprised that he could play like that. So it was just back to business after that.”

Worsfold rated LeCras, who finished his career with 441 goals from 219 games, as good as any small-medium forward of his era.

“I looked at the highlights of his 10 best goals and most of those goals were early days and he was running away from blokes, turning them inside out and running away. Which you didn’t see him do as much late in his career,” Worsfold said.

“His numbers stack up as good as anyone in terms of goals per game, but his assists have been pretty elite as well.”