Bulldogs skipper Marcus Bontempelli and his dejected teammates after last week’s loss to Essendon. Photo: AFL MEDIA
Football pundits can be guilty of “jumping off” teams too quickly. But sometimes we’re also prone to cling on to a romanticised image of a side which in reality no longer exists.
And I suspect I’m not the only one guilty of having carried a torch way too long for the Western Bulldogs.
They were my premiership tip in 2022, when I was seduced by what looked like phenomenal midfield depth and flexibility. Again last year, when I doubled down, sucked in by the promise of their forest of talls up forward.
Even this year, while I could no longer justify putting them any higher than seventh on my predicted ladder, I remained worried they could make that look like an embarrassing underestimation. But not any more.
The Bulldogs might yet get it together this season. They can certainly play a lot better – and have already this year – than the dross they served up against Essendon last Friday night. But even their best now no longer seems a threat to the competition’s best.
The reality is Luke Beveridge’s team hasn’t been nearly as good in practice as it’s looked on paper for several years now. And to be frank, it no longer even looks that impressive on paper.
That was a point underlined against the Bombers when, with biggest midfield guns Marcus Bontempelli and Tom Liberatore subdued by the Dons’ Sam Durham and Jye Caldwell respectively, the Dogs couldn’t find nearly enough alternative sources of inspiration.
Just as tellingly, though, the previous week against Geelong, when Bontempelli and Liberatore were clearly the best players on the park with the Cats missing wise old midfield heads in Patrick Dangerfield and Cam Guthrie, the Dogs still couldn’t get over the line.
Last year, when the Dogs missed out on playing finals, their midfield stayed solid enough to rank second on differentials for clearances and third for contested ball. But the numbers for both categories are down in 2024, and tellingly, they lost both counts on Friday to a team which ranked 12th and 13th in those areas last season.
You felt most of last year that the Bulldogs were perhaps missing mids Josh Dunkley and Lachie Hunter more than they had anticipated, certainly more than you would have thought when we were talking about the deepest midfield stocks in the competition.
Where are they all? Well, Jack Macrae and Caleb Daniel haven’t even been able to crack a game of late. Adam Treloar racks up the numbers but doesn’t have nearly the same impact on games he once did. And Demon recruit James Harmes on Friday night was in the “magoos” alongside Daniel.
Coach Luke Beveridge seems to have cooled on the idea of what a couple of years ago seemed a real potential strength, a huge core of flexible ground-level players who could play either forward or back as well as in midfield, Daniel a prime example, and the likes of Rhylee West and Laitham Vandermeer seemingly now cast as permanent small forwards.
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Which means that when it comes to midfield, it’s youngsters such as Ryley Sanders and Harvey Gallagher who are carrying more of the load than they perhaps should, while an older, wiser head like Bailey Dale (whilst not a midfielder) has his turn cooling his heels as the sub. That’s great for the future, but have the Dogs completely abandoned the here and now?
It’s hard to tell sometimes. As it was on Friday night, when Beveridge talked about not picking a side for two weeks down the track, but then seemed to imply that playing James O’Donnell in defence would help him prepare for a job on St Kilda’s tall forwards this week.
There was another confusing moment in Beveridge’s post-game press conference when he talked about “pain as we evolve and move into the future, because it’s all about the now and what’s up and what’s up next year and history’s history”.
“I understand that people aren’t sure about where we sit in the scheme of things.” OK, but listen to that word salad and you have to wonder whether even the Bulldogs themselves are.”
So often with the Dogs now, it seems like a plus in one area is cancelled by a minus in another. Take ball movement, in which the Dogs ranked 15th for D50 to F50 last year but were first in the AFL before Friday night. Great, except their ranking for defending opposition ball movement has simultaneously slipped from sixth to 12th.
Last year, the Dogs were only the 10th highest scoring team. Currently, they’re sixth for average scores. Again, great. But last year they were also a handy fifth for fewest points conceded. Now, that’s slipped to ninth.
Anyway, either set of numbers is a long way from the second the Bulldogs ranked for points scored in their grand final year of 2021. A forward set-up serviced by a much better-performed and deeper midfield.
And let’s call a spade a spade. The tall forward approach, much hyped the pre-season before last, has been an absolute damp squib. Back then, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan seemed like the cream on the cake. Now, he practically is the cake, with Aaron Naughton struggling, Sam Darcy deployed in several problematic holes and Rory Lobb at this stage a massive “bust”.
So the weaknesses remain, and the strengths aren’t what they used to be. That’s the bottom line. And that spells one thing. That if, as Beveridge put it, “history is history”, then in terms of a credible threat as a top team, so, at least for now, are the Bulldogs.
This article first appeared at ESPN.
