A new generation of Bulldogs get around emerging star Bailey Smith after a goal against Geelong. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The Western Bulldogs’ upset of ladder leader Geelong on Saturday night might well prove a significant moment in the club’s modern history. It might also provide an interesting bit of contrast.
It was around the same time in 2016 that the Dogs, fighting to prove their finals credentials, also took on the Cats.
It was an evening which threatened to be their undoing, not only losing the game by 25 points, but in the process also losing Tom Liberatore and Jack Macrae to injury, coming on top of injuries the previous week to Dale Morris, Matthew Boyd, Mitch Wallis, Matt Suckling and Jack Redpath.
If there was a tipping point for the Dogs, this had to be it. But of course, just a couple of months later, they’d end up walking off the MCG having won one of the game’s most amazing premierships.
Three years on, there would be considerable irony in the Bulldogs knocking over the best team in the competition but not even reaching the final eight for a third season since that momentous flag.
But the game moves on fast these days. And whether the Dogs make it, or at least set themselves for a decent crack at 2020, it will be with a squad that is dramatically different. Another ascent by the Western Bulldogs, even with enough of the same players, won’t be a revival of 2016, but a whole new story.
It’s a remarkable transformation on a number of fronts, none the least that the 2016 premiership team was one of the youngest in modern football history. But injuries, pressures from beyond the playing field, fluctuations in form, can all make the life of an AFL player, or the continuation of an era for a team, more problematic.
There are 15 players from that premiership 22 for now still officially on the Bulldogs’ books. But Tom Boyd, who had struggles with mental health issues, and Liam Picken, who fell victim to repeated concussions, have retired.
So on Saturday night against the Cats, there were only nine members of that grand final team on the ground. Some of the drivers of the win were the same, Marcus Bontempelli as brilliant as ever, Lachie Hunter, Jack Macrae and Josh Dunkley prolific.
What was around them, however, was significantly different. Up forward was a new group of goalkicking targets in Aaron Naughton, Josh Schache and Sam Lloyd. In defence were three cast-offs from others clubs, Jackson Trengove, Hayden Crozier and Taylor Duryea.
And supplementing all that, a tribe of precociously-talented kids – Bailey Smith, Patrick Lipinski, Bailey Williams, Ed Richards, Roarke Smith and ruckman Tim English.
As a young, still-raw playing group, they’re still prone to ups and downs. Already this season, the Bulldogs have had strings of four and three consecutive losses.
But their conquests have been notable, the win over Geelong the best yet of wins against opponents including Sydney, Hawthorn, Richmond, Brisbane and Port Adelaide – four of those rivals top-eight teams. And whether or not the Dogs play finals in 2019, you’d think they’ll be there again sooner than later.
Interestingly, numbers on their own don’t suggest such a radical transformation in the Bulldogs’ profile since the 2016 flag.
Saturday night’s team had an average age of 24 years 202 days and an average games experience of 82.4. The averages for that 2016 premiership side were 24 years 144 days and 82.1 games, as close enough to exactly the same. Which, in a way, is an even bigger tribute to coach Luke Beveridge.
There’s scarcely been a premiership team in history which didn’t rightfully expect to at least stay around the mark for a while after winning a flag. The Bulldogs of three years ago weren’t old, and weren’t overly banged-up, so the expectations for them were no less.
But Beveridge’s smartest move post-premiership might well prove to be recognising pretty early in the piece that, as they say, the band wasn’t going to be getting back together.
There were calculated gambles taken by allowing the likes of Joel Hamling, Jake Stringer, Luke Dahlhaus and Jordan Roughead to venture elsewhere. All of that quartet have to date prospered at their new destinations, too, which gives the critics a free whack when the Dogs don’t perform well.
There were unexpected departures in Tom Boyd, Shane Biggs and Clay Smith, all of whom retired, in terms of age, prematurely.
Thus the senior list has continued to keep turning over, 11 players in the past two-and-a-half seasons having been handed AFL debuts. There’s another half-dozen on the list still to see senior action. But Beveridge, clearly, won’t shy from picking them if he believes they’re ready.
Most flag-winning teams, if they don’t end up having a decent crack at repeating the effort, spend at least three or four years waiting with crossed fingers for things to click back into gear. That’s something no one can accuse Beveridge and his Bulldogs of having done.
If the Bulldogs don’t end up making this year’s final eight, they will become the first team since Hawthorn of 1979-81 to miss out on finals the next three seasons after having won a premiership. On those statistics, you can argue that it’s been a considerable fall from grace.
But the Dogs were always in unusual territory. A team which finished the home and away rounds of 2016 seventh on the ladder, then wheeled out a month of superlative football good enough to beat any opponent above them.
It’s become a touchy subject for some Bulldog fans, who feel that achievement doesn’t get enough kudos and that compared to other premiership teams, theirs is marked harshly.
But the great irony is that their coach’s early recognition not only that theirs was a special case which was far from certain to be sustained, but that the AFL ladder is far more fluid now than even a few years ago, could end up actually having them closer to their next premiership than might otherwise have been the case.
*This article first appeared at SPORTING NEWS.
