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THE WOLVES were baying for blood when David Smorgon first dipped his toes into the world of football administration.
It was late 1996 and the lifelong Footscray supporter, whose family's business empire had long been synonymous with the western suburbs, was among a group of Bulldogs-supporting businessmen charged with the task of evaluating the club and determining what sort of future it had.
Michael Cordell's wonderful documentary about the Bulldogs, Year of the Dogs, came out that year with its stark illustration of the hand-to-mouth existence by which the club was getting by, and there were grave fears held for the club's long-term viability.
It would be wrong to say that Smorgon was a reluctant president of the Bulldogs when he took over in late 1996.
Of those involved in the Bulldogs task force, he was the obvious candidate to replace Peter Gordon.
He was at a stage in life, from a business and personal point of view, where he had time and the passion to embrace the challenge of leading the club out of the muck. The family business empire that he helped build and grow had been broken up and his family had grown up and left the nest.
The task force's two main recommendations were controversial. The name Footscray had come to be regarded as a millstone from a brand point of view and that the club should be re-badged as the Western Bulldogs.
The second was that it should cease playing home games at the Whitten Oval immediately and instead move to the more spectator friendly Optus Oval and become Carlton's co-tenant.
Down the road, it would become a foundation tenant of the new Docklands Stadium, now known as Etihad Stadium.
Smorgon spent his first 12 months in charge in daily dialogue with the club's bankers. He tells some horror stories now about how close the club was to going under.
But a miracle was taking place on the field, with new coach Terry Wallace leading a side that finished with five-and-a-half wins in 1996 to a preliminary final berth the next.
Had Tony Liberatore's snap for goal not faded just centimetres short of the goals in the final quarter against Adelaide, the Dogs would have made their first Grand Final in 26 years and probably would have then gone on and won the flag.
Smorgon stabilised the club off the field, while Wallace reinvigorated things on it. Wallace was quite the revolutionary. He did in-game interviews and his pre-game warm-ups on the ground were soon copied by other clubs and brought about the end of the traditional curtain-raisers.
For a few years in the late 1990s, the Bulldogs were hip and innovative and a million miles removed from the stodgy old Footscray of Ted Whitten and Charlie Sutton.
Smorgon and Wallace fell out towards the end of 2002 and after treading water under Peter Rohde, in stepped Rodney Eade as coach. It was love at first sight. What started as a casual chat ended 11 hours later with the former Swans coach accepting an offer to be the new coach.
Eade would lead the Dogs to three preliminary finals and they had chances to win each time. That the club went 0-5 in preliminary finals under his watch which will likely be Smorgon's greatest football regret, but in just about every other respect, his presidency has been a raging success.
Under his watch, the Bulldogs didn't eradicate their debt but did keep it under control and they built a swish new training facility at the Whitten Oval.
They helped establish a beachhead for the AFL in the Northern Territory and grew the game among the dozens of migrant communities in the Melbourne's west. They were Western in name and in outlook.
Smorgon was able to passionately advocate the Bulldogs cause while rarely finding himself at odds with the AFL or rival clubs.
Indeed, his biggest critics seemed to have come from within, be they a small band of hard-core supporters who never supported the ditching of the Footscray name, to former players such as Doug Hawkins, Liberatore, Simon Beasley and Paul Dimattina, who would take to the airwaves from time to time to chide Smorgon and aspects of his presidency.
But in 16 years he never faced a serious challenger. Dimattina talked the talk from time to time, but that was it.
Of late, Smorgon identified that his time would soon be up and worked on a succession plan, but the surprise is that of all the names floated over the years as his likely successor that he will be soon handing the baton back to Gordon, who in his time was often the bête noir of the League administration but this time around is far more likely to engage with the AFL in the spirit of co-operation.
With the Bulldogs still carrying a sizeable debt and reporting back to the AFL on a regular basis, he will need to. But with a report conducted by former Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson last year confirming the club's viability while remaining based in Melbourne's western region, Gordon can proceed forward with confidence and ambition.
In that respect, he would be well-advised to follow the template created by Smorgon, never as shrill as Eddie McGuire or as combative as Jeff Kennett, but nonetheless a strident advocate for his club over a tremendous journey.
