Western Bulldogs’ captain Easton Wood leads his beaten team from the field last Sunday. Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Rarely does a week of an AFL season go by now without at least one if not more clubs and coaches being put under the microscope, sometimes after just one bad loss, let alone several.

This week, there’s multiple candidates. Melbourne, for instance, a preliminary finalist of last year, currently a miserable 1-4, second last on the ladder, and facing Richmond on Wednesday night after a four-day turnaround.

Similarly, much better was expected from North Melbourne this season after a promising 2018 and an off-season recruiting spree landed a clutch of established senior players. Instead, the Roos are last, also 1-4, with frustrated fans turning on coach Brad Scott.

One club, though, seems to be avoiding much blowback, even from its own, after a particularly ignominious defeat at the weekend. And perhaps that in itself is actually part of its problem.

Nothing will alter the iconic status of the Western Bulldogs’ 2016 premiership win, breaking a drought of 62 years, and won in the unlikeliest of circumstances, from seventh spot on the ladder (creating history) and after four successive cut-throat finals wins, two of them on the road.

But you can’t help but think this is also a club which should be a lot dirtier with itself about what’s followed that historic victory. Which, to be frank, is plenty of the sort of mediocrity it appeared to have shrugged off once and for all in September less than three years ago.

The Bulldogs’ loss to Carlton, a team which had won just three of its previous 36 games, was a stinker. By a margin of 44 points, and with the Dogs by the end seemingly unable to hit the side of the barn such was the scale of their kicking yips with 7.15.

That was a third loss in a row, and a second straight home loss after having gone down to everyone’s wooden spoon favourite Gold Coast in round three.

That makes it just 21 wins from 49 games since that glorious grand final win over Sydney, the Bulldogs last year becoming only the second team in the past 40 years to miss the finals two seasons in a row after winning a premiership.

It’s been a remarkable downturn, yet one which hasn’t attracted anything like the sort of forensic analysis you would expect were the club concerned, say, Collingwood, Hawthorn or Geelong.

Why is that the case? Well, at the risk of incurring the wrath of the Bulldog faithful, it’s hard not to conclude it’s because an entire club, however sub-consciously, is still pretty sated by that 2016 triumph. Because other possible explanations simply don’t stack up.

Doggies fans (understandably) bristle when it’s suggested they got lucky with the 2016 flag. The first year of the pre-finals bye did enable them to regain a clutch of key players who’d been out injured for their first knock-out final in Perth.

This, however, was also a side good enough to have won 15 home and away games, the most ever by a team finishing that low on the ladder. It was also a list which had to endure an at-times shocking run with injuries that season yet still managed to prevail.

No premiership team should ever have to re-state its credentials. But you can’t have it both ways. If 2016 was built on a lot more than one outstanding month of football, where has it been since? And if injuries haven’t been kind over the past couple of years (and they haven’t) why wasn’t that enough to stop Luke Beveridge’s men then?

The demise certainly hasn’t had anything to do with age. Bob Murphy, Matthew Boyd and now Liam Picken may not be around anymore, but a lot of others involved still are.

The Dogs’ flag team was one of the youngest of the game’s modern era. There’s still 14 of the premiership 22 on the list, and exactly half of the senior and rookie list of 44 from 2016 remain at the club. In terms of games’ experience, the 2019 list is ranked mid-table in the AFL.

There’s been some list decisions since 2016 worthy of scrutiny. The recruitment of Travis Cloke, for one. The trading out of an All-Australian Jake Stringer, currently playing excellent football for Essendon. The trading in of Josh Schache for two draft picks and restricted free agent Jackson Trengove on a three-year deal, neither of whom played last Sunday.

Some off-field talent has been lost, too, the club’s list and recruiting managers from the premiership year, Jason McCartney and Simon Dalrymple, both having departed at the beginning of last year for GWS and Sydney respectively. But it’s not like, either in the offices, or on the field, there’s been a complete changing of the guard.

Beveridge has alluded several times since the premiership to players not having handled the heights of their win well. It’s more than just supposition. How many who were part of the flag are better players, if at all, now than they were then?

As for raw numbers, well, scoring, an issue even in 2016, is still a major achilles heel. But a tell-tale sign is contested ball, a great measure of hunger. The Dogs were a clear No.1 on the differentials in 2016. That ranking slipped to eighth in 2017, then 16th last year. They’re currently mid-table again, but still a long way from their standards of three years ago.

On Sunday, the Bulldogs just pipped Carlton for contested ball, but were smashed 26-42 at the clearances, having gone into the game ranked No.1 in that category and the Blues a lowly 14th.

Any momentum built on two good wins to start this season against Sydney and Hawthorn has been well and truly extinguished by what’s come since, particularly losses to two opponents almost universally tipped pre-season to fill the bottom two spots on this year’s ladder.

Saturday night in Perth against Fremantle will be the Western Bulldogs’ 50th game since the famous grand final win. How many performances among that half-century have even remotely approached the sort of levels they reached in September 2016? Four, maybe five?

Safe to say not many. Which is fine if history does indeed judge the 2016 flag as a glorious but fleeting moment in the club’s history. But having broken the drought, shouldn’t the Bulldogs have aspired to more? And if they have, shouldn’t a whole club be a lot angrier than it seems to be about the ensuing mediocrity?

*This article first appeared at SPORTING NEWS.