We are all perplexed.
Autopsy Eagles 92 defeat Dogs 85
- Thread starter _Mike_
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- Apr 4, 2006
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Being the modern supportive father I am I said he could find someone else to take him to the football if that was the case.
That's the spirit!
I always tried to give my kids a choice too.
"Don't want to barrack for the Doggies any more, eh? No problem. Unfortunately this means you will no longer be coming to the footy with me and your siblings. Oh and by the way, you are no longer to speak to me. Now, I'm going to explain to you what a will is, and why your name is being removed from it. But, at the end of the day, it's important you realise that you can barrack for any team you want..."
Good points, but WB aren't good enough to just let a key mid destroy them through the middle all game. Newcombe destroyed you and now Kelly. It's inconceivable that there is no plan in place to account for this. Their bottom 4 is poor so why not use a battler to do a job? Not all teams tag, but how many teams just let Bont do as he pleases?
I'm a Hawks supporter and love Finn putting a blanket on key players.
And in case you are wondering I put WB at $1.02 through quite a few multi's where all the other legs won so I'm salty AF. But the points remain.
Lacklustre crowd.
Zeno The Great
Club Legend
Big footy is great therapy for the soul on days like today. Shout out to all the fellow posters, u save me a lot of money in therapy
Trying to find one positive from one of the worst losses I've ever seen before i go to bed, it was o'donnell. Thought he was sensational with some brilliant contested marks and he is a very nice kick. Need to get as many games into him as possibke...and leave him down back ffs.
Trying to find one positive from one of the worst losses I've ever seen before i go to bed, it was o'donnell. Thought he was sensational with some brilliant contested marks and he is a very nice kick. Need to get as many games into him as possibke...and leave him down back ffs.
dogwatch
Premium Platinum
I know nothing of the 1946 game and I'm not disputing that today's game was a huge upset. But surely Fitzroy's win over Geelong in Round 10 of 1963 has to be the greatest upset of all time? It has been dubbed "The Miracle Match" and there was even a book written about it for its 50th anniversary.
A more detailed description can be found in the link below but the essence of it was ...
Fitzroy were captain-coached by that great old warrior Kevin "Bulldog" Murray but he was away on state representative duties in Round 10. He was one of Fitzroy's only good players and went on to win a well-deserved Brownlow aged 31 in 1969.
Anyway Fitzroy had lost their first nine games. They made eight changes to the side from their previous match. Bear in mind that in those days they only picked 18 players, not 22, so that was almost half the side.Their team had seven teenagers. Only six of their players had played more than 18 games. Truly extraordinary.
Fitzroy did not win another game in 1963 and went totally winless in 1964. However in Round 10 of '63, without their only true star player, they trounced Geelong in the wet 9.13 67 to 3.13 31.
Geelong went on to be premiers that year. They didn't win another flag until 2007.
The genius behind the win was 27yo Wally Clark who had finished his Fitzroy playing days the year before. He was stand-in coach for Murray that day and despite his tactical genius he never coached another VFL game. He went on to be playing coach for LaTrobe in Tasmania for the next few years.
If you don't read anything else in the link below do read the sections headed Lead-up, Match Summary and Reception. Some of it is still so topical.
Regardless of what Wheelo's model might say I reckon this would have to be the greatest upset of all time. Today's loss had nothing on it.
Miracle Match (Australian rules football) - Wikipedia
Both Murray and Clark, bless them both, are still with us as far as I know. Both in their mid 80s.
dogwatch
Premium Platinum
There have been a lot of posts about dropping or getting rid of certain players after today's loss. Bailey Smith in particular has come in for a lot of harsh comment.
I think we need to hold fire on these judgements until the coaching situation is sorted out. Some of these players - especially the younger ones - seem to me to be more the victims of our malaise than the cause of it.
To me it seems as if they are playing without a sense of purpose or direction. It's affecting their confidence and their performance. Yet they may still have plenty to offer. We've seen before how a change of coach can turn a poorly performing side into a highly competitive one from one season to the next, without needing a massive change in personnel. Collingwood with McRae is a recent example. Closer to home there was Beveridge in 2015, Eade in 2005 and Terry Wallace in 1997. Almost overnight players who were labelled battlers started to look like stars.
So I don't think we should be talking about a fire sale just yet. We would almost certainly regret it.
Let's wait and see how the coaching situation plays out over the next few weeks.
I think we need to hold fire on these judgements until the coaching situation is sorted out. Some of these players - especially the younger ones - seem to me to be more the victims of our malaise than the cause of it.
To me it seems as if they are playing without a sense of purpose or direction. It's affecting their confidence and their performance. Yet they may still have plenty to offer. We've seen before how a change of coach can turn a poorly performing side into a highly competitive one from one season to the next, without needing a massive change in personnel. Collingwood with McRae is a recent example. Closer to home there was Beveridge in 2015, Eade in 2005 and Terry Wallace in 1997. Almost overnight players who were labelled battlers started to look like stars.
So I don't think we should be talking about a fire sale just yet. We would almost certainly regret it.
Let's wait and see how the coaching situation plays out over the next few weeks.
- Sep 30, 2019
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I agree, however I would say there are certain players that continually get games that make the same mistakes, that will never improve that I never want to see in the team again. I think we all agree that Bailey Smith is a rare talent. This year particularly later in the season something has been completely off with him.
You can't blame his talent, it doesn't just disappear, confidence does. Who creates and helps the confidence? The coach and the coaching panel do.
My belief is that if Bevo stays then we will lose Smith. People will say who cares? But, 12-18 months ago he was close to the best young mid in the comp.
We lack speed and he has it in spades. If he wants to go we need to let him go but how bad are we if he wants to go?
Players I have no wish to see in a Bulldogs AFL jumper again are Numbers 23 and 42. I can't even mention their names because I get mad at thinking about them.
wayniac
Club Legend
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That's OK but Bailey Smith is a terrible kick. That's a problem that is rarely fixable. He kicks it too high without direction. He's a poor man's Luke Dahlhaus.
When Dahlhaus came to the club, he had the same vibe, the dreadlocks, the energy and buzz. He was an awful kick but would run to spots and get involved in handball chains and snag the odd goal/snap. The difference? Tackling and two way running. We got the best out of Dahl, we're getting the worst out of Smith and it's downhill from here on. Jake Stringer MK 2.
- Jan 19, 2014
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With Dahl it wasn't all about him. Don't get the same vibe from Smith.
I'm bloody annoyed with Bevo that he kept selecting him after the Collingwood game and I would be unsurprised if a lot of his team mates were as well. He's the lay down Sally of this team and letting Kelly waltz around in the first quarter just killed the coach. Coach's own fault though. Judgement.
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Admittedly a fair few came in after that, but still only 23-24 thousand. We have one of the worst fan bases in the league, full stop.
Credit to Essendon and Carlton fans they've been continuing to turn up for years even though they were crap.
I know this season hasn't been great but we're coming off the back of a successful era and our fans still don't turn up.
Sounds like it was only a couple of binfire humans thankfully. You’d expect that from Carlton morons, but I guess it’s true every club has a few.
Listening to Bevo pre match didn't fill me with any confidence. "We go into the game with some trepidation." This is against a team that lost by over 100 points last round and have won 2 games for the season. A couple of days before he said "we need to take care of what we can control. " Fair enough, but what he says after the game and before it doesn't send that message. I don't know WTF he is on about anymore and the way the players come out to play says they don't know either. All we get now is excuse after excuse.
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Zeno The Great
Club Legend
I, like lots of others, joked that we’d probably lose to West Coast. Turns out we are that bad. Personally I’m not going to judge the character of the club by the recent performances, I’m going to judge it on how we respond as an entire organisation. At a bare minimum the entire football department needs a thorough independent review.
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Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com
NBates
Brownlow Medallist
While I agree in principle with the coach being sorted first, the thing that's troubling me about Bailey Smith is his recent spats with his captain. It happened again yesterday. I don't think that's a problem that can be solved with a new coach.
I agree. The audio is quite damning. He sounded defeated before the match even started:
The pre-game comment from Luke Beveridge that caught our interest at 3AW
A pre-game comment on Fox Footy from Luke Beveridge caught our interest at 3AW Football, particularly given the fact the Western Bulldogs lost to West Coast. It came after the Dogs’ coach was asked if he was “excited” about Sunday’s clash against the lowly Eagles. Press PLAY below to hear it all...
www.3aw.com.au
NBates
Brownlow Medallist
Those 2 clubs also have double the number of supporters we have, which means they have double the supporters that will hang in there.
I don't believe our membership numbers. I wish you could get access to see where these numbers actually come from. Again I will state that there were a large number of free ticket holders handed out by the club that attended yesterday. I don't begrudge giving these people a day out at the footy, I just don't like how we aren't honest and transparent about the real numbers.
- Jan 19, 2014
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This one really is on Bevo. Bont will be resenting his continued selection because he's often dishonest in his effort, amongst the first to throw the towel in and is unreliable. Untrustworthy in a football sense. It's like poison to a team. He bit them in the Collinwood game and no anti-venom was administered.
We've been crook ever since and yesterday lapsed into a coma and are now on life support.
Dog 36
Norm Smith Medallist
Just to top it all off I dropped kids off at school and they had their friends waiting at the gate for them laughing at them because of our loss.
Good to see banter still exists in the school yard.
Good to see banter still exists in the school yard.
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It was actually way better than I thought it would be…. Our similar no hope game after a deflation loss situation last year vs GWS drew less than 20k. Our supporters are pretty fed up.
Essendon and Carlton have nearly double the members? And get double match ups vs each other at the MCG as a result, which leads to higher crowds, plus marquee games and all the other factors I won’t get into.
We had 39,000 in 2016, we have 56,000 this year and would no doubt have reached 60,000 if we hadn’t screwed up 40 chances to leap up the ladder. The supporters aren’t dumb, the inconsistency after the last few years, the team selection, game plan etc every problem has been apparent to every supporter except the blind fools that back the team, disregarding all logic. There are a number of games the last few seasons that I haven’t attended, including yesterday, because it was so predictable what kind of performance we would dish up.
So no, I don’t blame the fans for not wanting to waste a day to go watch us lose to the worst AFL in history statistically. Every bulldogs supporter over the age of 20-30 has seen the club in some state of turmoil or in a crisis or stuck in a state of bottom dwelling, but 2016 has changed the outlook of many, and those many do not want us to repeat history and fall back to irrelevance.
