What They're Saying - The Bulldogs Media Thread - Part 2

[BrisDog]

Nah f**k him. Campaigner.

 

[Struggle]

His return game at etihad is one of my all time favourite non finals games. Him squibbing it all day and the crowd getting stuck into him every time he even stood up on the bench to return to the field, combined with Big Will coming in to absolutely demolish Mumford after overturning his suspension for touching an ump in the vfl. It was just the perfect storm to have both the team and the fans up and about and one I'll never forget.

So thanks for that Groff you flog.

 

[perro_loco]

I gotta admit I still am a Griff fan.

Once the dust settles we are all able to see things more clearly. I loved Griffen. Pity he left in bad circumstances. There is always another side to a story.

 

[Draft Pick]

Once the dust settles we are all able to see things more clearly. I loved Griffen. Pity he left in bad circumstances. There is always another side to a story.

Yep.

Life member through having given 10 years service, and a 200 game player.

Macca had some good points as a coach no doubt, but also some very bad ones, which outweighed the good. Griff had to deal with the bad, and left.


Would have knocked back many offers over those 10 years.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I've said it a million times before, but I'm always surprised at how willing and easy people find it to remove Griffen's leaving from the context where half a dozen players also walked out, more would have if the coach stayed, and the coach lost the players beyond Griffen himself.

Griffen, in that article, could have slagged off McCartney but he didn't.

 

[Norm De Guerre]

There’s an alternate reality where that story ends with him beating us in a prelim and retiring with a premiership. Vomit.

Not even Damo could contrive a worse sliding doors than this one.

 

[gangsta deluxe]

I've said it a million times before, but I'm always surprised at how willing and easy people find it to remove Griffen's leaving from the context where half a dozen players also walked out, more would have if the coach stayed, and the coach lost the players beyond Griffen himself.

Griffen, in that article, could have slagged off McCartney but he didn't.

I’m sorry but that’s bullshit.

He took all the contextual factors in him leaving out and made it seem a casual decision to move on because he was in a slump. He didn’t take ownership of his actions and their consequences- that to me is critical in being a person worthy of respect.

 

[gangsta deluxe]

If he had said he was well aware of what he was doing but made the decision after weighing things up carefully then I could forgive him, but that article was ****ing gutless.

 

[dogwatch]

I've said it a million times before, but I'm always surprised at how willing and easy people find it to remove Griffen's leaving from the context where half a dozen players also walked out, more would have if the coach stayed, and the coach lost the players beyond Griffen himself.

Griffen, in that article, could have slagged off McCartney but he didn't.

Yes, I thought his failure to mention McCartney was pretty strange since it was pivotal at the time. I don't accept that he went from being at "a club that meant the world" to him to being stale and needing a change in scenery so quickly. I do accept that the fun had gone out of his footy but as you say he wasn't the only one experiencing that. We were on the cusp of a major walkout.

My take is that he hates stress and personal confrontation and has great difficulty dealing with it. So he doesn't want to stir up a feud with BMac now, several years after the dust has settled. It is easier to use a euphemism like "I went stale".

That's also why he couldn't deal directly with McCartney at the time although I think he'd tried but ineffectually, IIRC. And it's also why, when he said to his manager and Leon Cameron "just get me out of here", he went pig-shooting rather than face the fans and the media.

 

[BEaston]

Yes, I thought his failure to mention McCartney was pretty strange since it was pivotal at the time. I don't accept that he went from being at "a club that meant the world" to him to being stale and needing a change in scenery so quickly. I do accept that the fun had gone out of his footy but as you say he wasn't the only one experiencing that. We were on the cusp of a major walkout.

My take is that he hates stress and personal confrontation and has great difficulty dealing with it. So he doesn't want to stir up a feud with BMac now, several years after the dust has settled. It is easier to use a euphemism like "I went stale".

That's also why he couldn't deal directly with McCartney at the time although I think he'd tried but ineffectually, IIRC. And it's also why, when he said to his manager and Leon Cameron "just get me out of here", he went pig-shooting rather than face the fans and the media.

Agree with this.

 

[maddog37]

Yes, I thought his failure to mention McCartney was pretty strange since it was pivotal at the time. I don't accept that he went from being at "a club that meant the world" to him to being stale and needing a change in scenery so quickly. I do accept that the fun had gone out of his footy but as you say he wasn't the only one experiencing that. We were on the cusp of a major walkout.

My take is that he hates stress and personal confrontation and has great difficulty dealing with it. So he doesn't want to stir up a feud with BMac now, several years after the dust has settled. It is easier to use a euphemism like "I went stale".

That's also why he couldn't deal directly with McCartney at the time although I think he'd tried but ineffectually, IIRC. And it's also why, when he said to his manager and Leon Cameron "just get me out of here", he went pig-shooting rather than face the fans and the media.

I think he was suffering great personal loss and still is and that more than anything affected his ability to deal with the situation. I’m not sure what would be achieved by potting bmac anyway.

 

[King Harold]

I think he was suffering great personal loss and still is and that more than anything affected his ability to deal with the situation. I’m not sure what would be achieved by potting bmac anyway.

Sat next to Griff at a club function , can't remember if his father had passed at that point , but this boy was a very troubled soul. I guess that's why I can't dislike him like others on here.
I can understand why he is being judged harshly by our supporters , but I believe he is a decent bloke that for whatever reason felt he had to move on.
Hope is is welcomed back some time in the future.

 

[Outback Footy]

Enjoyed booing him as a plastic, at the time I hated what he did and how it transpired. More info with time and Ive got sympathy for the guy. BMac seems impossible, probs even more of an impact than the "retiring country boy in the spotlight as captain". In retrospect Griff stays, BMac stays, we don't get Boyyyyd, others leave early, 2016 never happens.

So thanks Griff, in a pretty direct way your departure led directly to our flag. Gotta love you for that. And everything you did for us when u were in rw&b. My fave dogs player for a long time.

But thank heck we beat you in the prelim

 

[Outback Footy]

So Glory is the new Glory, rightio then cap'n

 

[Lindsay_Gilbee]

https://www.sen.com.au/news/2018/12/12/dahlhaus-regrets-reaction-to-murphy-criticism/

 

[Spectre]

Jeez, some people are quick to forget. Griff left us at possibly one of the lowest moments in our history, lying in the gutter with our teeth kicked in and our trousers round our ankles. If he loved our team, if he truly bled for the tricolours, there wouldn't have been any pig shooting shenanigans - as soon as Macca was ousted, he would be the first to report for duty under Bevo. What he did instead was pull the doona over his head when life got too hard; and then, to REALLY show how much he loves us, participated in the #belessbulldog garbage - guess that was his way of de-stressing and refreshing himself. Take your historical revisionism...er, "contrition" elsewhere, Cyclops, those of us who remember your actions aren't buying it.

Dahl is another good example - one word from Murph after a few pretty average seasons (regardless how much that word might actually have missed the mark by), and he turns his back on the team he loves? Now banging on about how great he feels at a new club - what, because no one has said something you disagree with yet? FFS, they offered you more money and you took it. The club loyalty, spats etc were merely a sideshow. Be honest, we might respect you more.

 

[dogwatch]

Jeez, some people are quick to forget. Griff left us at possibly one of the lowest moments in our history, lying in the gutter with our teeth kicked in and our trousers round our ankles. If he loved our team, if he truly bled for the tricolours, there wouldn't have been any pig shooting shenanigans - as soon as Macca was ousted, he would be the first to report for duty under Bevo. What he did instead was pull the doona over his head when life got too hard; and then, to REALLY show how much he loves us, participated in the #belessbulldog garbage - guess that was his way of de-stressing and refreshing himself. Take your historical revisionism...er, "contrition" elsewhere, Cyclops, those of us who remember your actions aren't buying it.

Dahl is another good example - one word from Murph after a few pretty average seasons (regardless how much that word might actually have missed the mark by), and he turns his back on the team he loves? Now banging on about how great he feels at a new club - what, because no one has said something you disagree with yet? FFS, they offered you more money and you took it. The club loyalty, spats etc were merely a sideshow. Be honest, we might respect you more.

I'm not defending Griffen - just saying what I think is his character flaw that makes him duck for cover rather than deal head-on with what's bugging him. The fact that he was the one who jumped first in the 2014 off-season might have actually saved a few other defections. However that and the club's dire situation would not have been uppermost in his line of thinking. In his mind he simply had to get out fast for his own sanity.

As for that Be Less Bulldog poster ... I'm not convinced that Cal, Griff and Leon knew the photo was going to be used in that way. Or if they did they would have been pretty uncomfortable with it. My guess is a photographer thought it would be cute to get a pic of the three ex-Bulldogs together and then when it landed on the desks of the PR people somebody came up with the tasteless idea for the "Be Less Bulldog" gag.

Anyway it was great to rub their faces in it in 2016.

 

[Spectre]

I'm not defending Griffen - just saying what I think is his character flaw that makes him duck for cover rather than deal head-on with what's bugging him. The fact that he was the one who jumped first in the 2014 off-season might have actually saved a few other defections. However that and the club's dire situation would not have been uppermost in his line of thinking. In his mind he simply had to get out fast for his own sanity.

As for that Be Less Bulldog poster ... I'm not convinced that Cal, Griff and Leon knew the photo was going to be used in that way. Or if they did they would have been pretty uncomfortable with it. My guess is a photographer thought it would be cute to get a pic of the three ex-Bulldogs together and then when it landed on the desks of the PR people somebody came up with the tasteless idea for the "Be Less Bulldog" gag.

Anyway it was great to rub their faces in it in 2016.

Agree with most of what you're saying, and wasn't having a go at you specifically. Griff wasn't built to be captain, and clearly struggled with the hard-headed attitude required to face difficult situations. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. His approach to the goings on at the end of '14 could kindly be described as panicked self-preservation (and less kindly, as cowardice) - again, not a hanging offence, but certainly not something to be lionised or respected for. But the constant credit he seems to get for what came next - the "if Griff doesn't leave, no Bevo/no Boyd/no flag" line of thinking - really gets up my nose. Griff didn't engineer all of that, and he certainly didn't care what happened to the club at the time: he was looking out for number 1. That the club fluked it's way into a good position from the one he helped leave us in is a minor miracle, and no amount of pretty words and massaging of the narrative should ever leave the credit for that at his door.

As for the ignorance of what that photo/poster would be used for, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to know that something nefarious was afoot. But I'm a generous guy, and happy to entertain your premise. Why, then, did he not use the most recent article as a forum to touch on that, how uneasy it made him feel to crap on the club that gave him the bulk of his career, even if done without his knowledge? I guess we can at least be thankful he didn't try to BS us about that. He didn't care, and that's fine - it was great to smash his mob on the way to our flag, and I hope those 15 minutes spent at the servo felt like a lifetime to him.

 

[Mofra]

Enjoyed booing him as a plastic, at the time I hated what he did and how it transpired. More info with time and Ive got sympathy for the guy.

Ditto.

Griff is a simple country guy who was thrust into a situation way beyond his ability to cope with. It's telling that he is heading straight back to the country to live the quiet life again.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Agree with most of what you're saying, and wasn't having a go at you specifically. Griff wasn't built to be captain, and clearly struggled with the hard-headed attitude required to face difficult situations. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. His approach to the goings on at the end of '14 could kindly be described as panicked self-preservation (and less kindly, as cowardice) - again, not a hanging offence, but certainly not something to be lionised or respected for. But the constant credit he seems to get for what came next - the "if Griff doesn't leave, no Bevo/no Boyd/no flag" line of thinking - really gets up my nose. Griff didn't engineer all of that, and he certainly didn't care what happened to the club at the time: he was looking out for number 1. That the club fluked it's way into a good position from the one he helped leave us in is a minor miracle, and no amount of pretty words and massaging of the narrative should ever leave the credit for that at his door.

As for the ignorance of what that photo/poster would be used for, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to know that something nefarious was afoot. But I'm a generous guy, and happy to entertain your premise. Why, then, did he not use the most recent article as a forum to touch on that, how uneasy it made him feel to crap on the club that gave him the bulk of his career, even if done without his knowledge? I guess we can at least be thankful he didn't try to BS us about that. He didn't care, and that's fine - it was great to smash his mob on the way to our flag, and I hope those 15 minutes spent at the servo felt like a lifetime to him.

Let's face it, it was a puff piece, "I'm just an ordinary guy who played footy for a while". The things we wanted to hear about, the events throughout 2014 including his contact with Cameron, team morale, what he thought of being burdened with the captaincy, his opinion of BMac, the step by step account of what happened in the days preceding his departure, were totally missing. Maybe we never will hear the full story.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Dogs v Saints 2000 (?), where we came back from 31 pts down at 3/4 time, on Fox now. Hudgton sheds a tear when the Saints lose.

"Grant kicks a goal, a team-lifting goal" to start our comeback.

 

[maddog37]

Hudgton still a knob

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Dogs v Saints 2000 (?), where we came back from 31 pts down at 3/4 time, on Fox now. Hudgton sheds a tear when the Saints lose.

"Grant kicks a goal, a team-lifting goal" to start our comeback.

Amazing how familiar some of the players' moves are, plus what was said in the commentary, for me in that game, after all this time. I had a video tape of it and must have watched it a lot.

 

[Spectre]

Let's face it, it was a puff piece, "I'm just an ordinary guy who played footy for a while". The things we wanted to hear about, the events throughout 2014 including his contact with Cameron, team morale, what he thought of being burdened with the captaincy, his opinion of BMac, the step by step account of what happened in the days preceding his departure, were totally missing. Maybe we never will hear the full story.

Agreed, and if he ever does want to provide actual new information and details (rather than soft spin doctoring), I'm all ears, as I'm sure many here would be too.

 

[maddog37]

If Tom Boyd can tap into the mindset that made him such a big game unit in 2016 we have so much to look forward to. The big fella can be a star and it will be so sweet if he does.