What They're Saying - The Bulldogs Media Thread - Part 4

[theAthenian]

Tbh, no one in the media really rates us.

They, like most on here, see massive flaws in our gamestyle/personnel, and therefore don't put the time into analysing the Dogs.

I would expect that they see us losing most of our next 5 games and seeing us become irrelevant this season.

The media will pile on if we fail to fire, but only to the extent that we have so much talent and can't put it together.

I hope that our team proves everyone wrong.

I RATE US EXTREEMELY HIGHLY

I urge all our bigfooty bulldog posters to avoid wearing blinkers and listening to exfootballers and their flagellations
Before u invest your mouth (or money) ..Do the reasearch, watch games that dont involve us
if you think we are the only team that makes mistakes, looks 'soft', doesnt have a game plan then watching a few gems over the weekend should open the eyes. Start with the great pretenders collingwood who for all their superiority were 6.9 at 3 qtr time against a swans outfit with no defenders. Maybe revel in the 6-2 demons who should be 5-3 like us but thankfully a dubious free kick 100m away saved the day. How bout those carlton twin towers - yeah enough said already. Let's be like geelong, oops sorry we are, we are both 5-3. Since round two when the penny dropped and as Bevo has said the 4 talls no smalls gameplan was tossed into the rubbish bin we have lost one game to port in horrid conditions at AO.

Fact our defense is top shelf
Fact our midfield has 4 top 50 players in it
Fact our offence is extremely talented and tall
Fact our coaching regime has produced years of finals and 2 gf appearances

Time is on our side if we stay injury free and all hands available for the most part we are locked for a tilt this year.

Final fact : we have flown under the radar this season because of our start and because suck a tallented forward line has wrongly been deemed to be misfiring (which is rubbish due to the fact that we have played 4 wet games in 8 weeks)

Dont confuse expectation and fantasy with reality and statistical analysis
we are currently 5-3 at the beginning of the longest afl season in history 23 h/a games
we have a team that is according to champion data one of the most gifted
we have played melb bris rich freo port stkild gws and ... haw (apart from hawks every team when we played them is/was a top 8 aspirant)

every accusation levelled at the WBulldogs about gameplan, personel, coaching and so forth could easily apply to every top eight team without exception
if we are so off the pace why are we in it to our eyeballs?

 

[The Inbetweener]

He went on to say Bont is still on track to have the 2nd best season only behind Ablett in 2010.

Interesting Clayton Oliver

13

Clayton Oliver

Age

27

Ht

189cm

Wt

88kg

Pos.

Mid

Career

Season

Last 5

D

27.8

5star

K

9.5

4star

HB

18.4

5star

M

3.2

3star

T

6.3

5star

CL

6.3

5star

D

25.1

5star

K

11.1

4star

HB

14.0

5star

M

3.6

4star

T

5.6

5star

CL

5.9

5star

D

19.2

5star

K

4.6

2star

HB

14.6

5star

M

2.0

3star

T

4.4

5star

CL

3.8

5star

isn’t in the top 10

 

[ScragCity]

He went on to say Bont is still on track to have the 2nd best season only behind Ablett in 2010.

Interesting Clayton Oliver isn’t in the top 10

Mitch Owens is a freak. So good for a second year player.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

He went on to say Bont is still on track to have the 2nd best season only behind Ablett in 2010.

Interesting Clayton Oliver isn’t in the top 10

Plenty of time for him to be CHEATED out of the rewards, for the nth time

 

[grassman75]

Two things:

1. I would like to see the premiership window graphic if they took rounds 1 and 2 out. I think things would look a lot better

2. Take a look at our draw. Collingwood and 2 X Geelong are difficult games but the rest we could well go in as favourites.

The Saints loss was terrible but we have steadied the ship.

Have a look at Melbourne's draw so far....must be the easiest draw of a previous year top 8 team

 

[ScottyDogg]

 

[In Repair]

View attachment 1683120

Apologies for bringing up an ex player but He also went on to say that dunkley’s player ratings were poor on the weekend (despite the commentary surrounding his good game) because his ball use was terrible. 3rd worst ball use for the season of any player.

 

[dogwatch]

Apologies for bringing up an ex player but He also went on to say that dunkley’s player ratings were poor on the weekend (despite the commentary surrounding his good game) because his ball use was terrible. 3rd worst ball use for the season of any player.

Ball use (aka hurt factor) is critical. This is the trap of looking at basic stats (disposals, kicks) and deciding on that basis who the best players were.

To illustrate this point, Marcus Bontempelli who people are starting to recognise as far and away the best player in the AFL this season (see previous post) is currently ranked 31st in the AFL for avge disposals per game. And Bailey Smith who isn't really on anybody's radar in these discussions is ranked 33rd.

 

[Norm De Guerre]

Anybody paying attention knows how much the Bont is carrying this side.

He has been epic.

 

[Next Waiting]

View attachment 1683120

Libba got some love from the stat guy too. IIRC he said that Libba missed 2 matches but if the ratings had been done over 600 mins (6 games) as opposed to 800 mins (8 games) Libba would have been the 3rd ranked player.

Also said that Macrae's impact as a hybrid HF mid had improved over the last few weeks.

 

[doggies ftw]

Libba got some love from the stat guy too. IIRC he said that Libba missed a match but if the ratings had been done over 600 mins (6 games) as opposed to 800 mins (8 games) Libba would have been the 3rd ranked player.

Sort of a bad thing thing though that we’re middling with our stars absolutely performing out of their skin. Been saying for a while we’re being carried by our guns who are absolute top of top league wide, and they paper over our issues a little bit because they drag us across the line. Would have thought if we had these performances from these 3 we’d be right on top. But anyway probably an easier fix to get our bottom 6 to start contributing a bit more, last few weeks have been better

 

[geoffjennings79]

Mitch Owens is a freak. So good for a second year player.

Not a patch on Buck though. CCR told me.

 

[Next Waiting]

Sort of a bad thing thing though that we’re middling with our stars absolutely performing out of their skin. Been saying for a while we’re being carried by our guns who are absolute top of top league wide, and they paper over our issues a little bit because they drag us across the line. Would have thought if we had these performances from these 3 we’d be right on top. But anyway probably an easier fix to get our bottom 6 to start contributing a bit more, last few weeks have been better

TBF, we're sort of middlingish on ladder because of our first 2 games.

But a glaring (and predictable) problem has been identified and rectified and Weightman (returning from injury) and Arty Jones ( a punt (perhaps) that's paying off big) have helped to arrest the situation.

It's a gelling and continuity thing from here on in. Perhaps only Bruce for Keath outside of those in the 23 last week if form holds and then improves.

 

[NBates]

 

[Lex22]

Apologies for bringing up an ex player but He also went on to say that dunkley’s player ratings were poor on the weekend (despite the commentary surrounding his good game) because his ball use was terrible. 3rd worst ball use for the season of any player.

There was a period in that last quarter vs Carlton that summed Dunks up perfectly.

Had some great moments over five minutes; a big mark, one bone crunching tackle and then gets back to help out the defence.

After all that he misses a 20m straight forward pass to an unopposed team mate that results in a Carlton goal.

I don’t miss cringing every time he kicks it.

Good honest player, but you can’t be a star with such poor disposal.

 

[Dogs 13]

Not a patch on Buck though. CCR told me.

Doo doo doo

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

How Luke Beveridge and the Bulldogs have adjusted on the fly this AFL season

Luke Beveridge ended a 62-year premiership drought for the Western Bulldogs, but the polarising coach is not resting on his laurels seven years later, write Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson.

www.abc.net.au

 

[geoffjennings79]

How Luke Beveridge and the Bulldogs have adjusted on the fly this AFL season

Luke Beveridge ended a 62-year premiership drought for the Western Bulldogs, but the polarising coach is not resting on his laurels seven years later, write Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson.

www.abc.net.au

Good analysis. I'm not surprised by the author/s. Other media could take note - but they won't. Not sure Beveridge cares either way, but at least there are footy journos capable of digging into a story, rather than breathlessly chasing ambulances around.

 

[dogwatch]

How Luke Beveridge and the Bulldogs have adjusted on the fly this AFL season

Luke Beveridge ended a 62-year premiership drought for the Western Bulldogs, but the polarising coach is not resting on his laurels seven years later, write Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson.

www.abc.net.au

Those charts that separate our Rd1-4 performance from our Rd 5-8 performance are fascinating. It's not just cherrypicking either because we won 2 of those first four. It underlines what I meant by the failure of other media commentators (I won't flatter them with the label "analysts") to exercise any nuance in their weekly summaries.

However some of this was opportunism on Bevo's part too. Making a virtue of necessity. Cody was injured after a good pre-season and Arty was all set for a Rd 1 debut when he got injured so we opted to try the four talls up forward which worked a treat in a practice game against hapless North but was unlikely to frighten Melbourne or St Kilda. Then when Arty came in for his debut we started to see the pressure turned up a bit in the forward half. With Cody also returning it has been improving every week since then. That would explain quite a bit of the difference in those two data points (Rd1-4 vs Rd5-8).

And while that chart "Marks and Points per Inside 50" (q.v) shows a distinct shift in the right direction it should be noted that we have only gone from worst in the AFL for marks/i50 to 4th worst.

So our i50s are still quite problematical. Let's call them "a work in progress".
If we could move that single stat up to around top 4 in the AFL (say the equal of Carlton) I think we would be a very serious threat this year. That's as long as we keep other indicators at or about the same level. It's a big ask though. It's not just about the forward line, it's about how we structure up right across the field, and how we go about our transitions from defence or from the boundary throw-ins between the arcs. Some of that is dependent on the personnel we've got and their pace, or lack of it.

 

[Bulldog Brent]

Great article. A key takeaway I had was why did we only have one practice match in the preseason compared to two for most clubs? We went into round 1 thinking our template against North was working. That’s an extremely small sample size.

But pleased with the last few weeks ….

 

[Bald]

Great article. A key takeaway I had was why did we only have one practice match in the preseason compared to two for most clubs? We went into round 1 thinking our template against North was working. That’s an extremely small sample size.

But pleased with the last few weeks ….

Even the practice match we had wasn’t much of a practice match to be honest.

 

[weltschmerz]

 

[TiAn_]

How Luke Beveridge and the Bulldogs have adjusted on the fly this AFL season

Luke Beveridge ended a 62-year premiership drought for the Western Bulldogs, but the polarising coach is not resting on his laurels seven years later, write Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson.

www.abc.net.au

Ben anticipating this since the ABC bloke asked all those great questions at the presser. Love their work.

 

[Mofra]

Apologies for bringing up an ex player but He also went on to say that dunkley’s player ratings were poor on the weekend (despite the commentary surrounding his good game) because his ball use was terrible. 3rd worst ball use for the season of any player.

Dunkley had 11 turnovers last weekend.
His best is amazing but any game you make 11 howlers is not your best.

 

[Philthy1]

How Luke Beveridge and the Bulldogs have adjusted on the fly this AFL season

Luke Beveridge ended a 62-year premiership drought for the Western Bulldogs, but the polarising coach is not resting on his laurels seven years later, write Cody Atkinson and Sean Lawson.

www.abc.net.au

Why don’t any of the TV so called ‘analysis’ programs set up like this? This is well thought out and argued.

Footy Classified bangs on about footy politics like the average punter actually cares about that crap.

On the couch simply showed the premiership window quadrant which is very crude and simplistic analysis.