Axe Man
27-04-2020, 10:32 AM
Relive the night Western Bulldogs ended Essendon’s 20-game winning streak with ‘super flood’ (https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/western-bulldogs/relive-the-night-western-bulldogs-ended-essendons-20game-winning-streak-with-super-flood/news-story/ba0bec04622196805bc019b8a890fa37)
https://i.postimg.cc/vTVv8Z9p/mission.png (https://postimages.org/)
It was the night mission impossible became possible.
Western Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace embraced his inner-Tom Cruise as his side prepared for footy’s tallest task — taking on the mighty Essendon side of 2000.
The Bombers were within two wins of immortality and closing in on becoming the second team in AFL history, and first since 1929, to navigate a home-and-away season undefeated.
Wallace went as far as arriving at training dressed as Cruise’s Mission Impossible character Ethan Hunt and devised a strategy which was a forerunner to the zone defence now deployed by most AFL clubs.
Drawing on a plan instigated by coaches from NFL team Denver Broncos, Wallace strangled Essendon’s lethal forward line with what was dubbed the “super flood”.
“We started to select the side at match committee early in the week and it just wasn’t matching up anywhere near the way we needed it to,” Wallace said.
“At one stage we had Mitch Hahn, who was in about his third game, matched up on James Hird.
“We just said, ‘if we go in one-on-one against them we just don’t think we’ve got the personnel … to be able to get the job done’.”
THE MIND GAMES
Wallace played the ultimate game of deception with media before the Round 21 blockbuster, telling reporters: ‘‘You’ve got to kick goals because you know they’re going to kick a score and it’s not going to be a 12-goal game similar to the Carlton one (The Bulldogs defeated Carlton by three points in Round 19, 11.9 (75) to 11.6 (72)).’’
The cunning Bulldogs fooled media — and the Bombers — by honing their novel strategy at Werribee’s Chirnside Park rather than Whitten Oval.
“We painted the ground at Werribee into grids where the players had to fall back in formation,” Wallace said.
“We did it without prying eyes, without anyone watching, because they thought we had already finished training and gone home.”
Wallace said his side needed to land the ultimate “sucker punch” if they were going to overcome one of the greatest sides of the modern era and seal a finals berth.
Star forward Nathan Brown agreed: “It was in an era where we played against the very best Geelong sides, the very best Essendon side and obviously Brisbane Lions in that threepeat,” he recalled.
“They were untouchable that year. You were still able to get to Geelong sometimes. You were still able to get to Brisbane Lions even though they won three premierships.
“But that Essendon side of 2000, when they were playing footy, they were untouchable.”
Defender Steven Kretiuk relished the mind games Wallace played with Kevin Sheedy’s undefeated Bombers.
“We knew basically what we were going to do against Essendon, but Plough was out there saying, ‘we need to have a shootout. We need to kick 25-plus goals. We can’t flood against Essendon with their tall forwards’,” Kretiuk said.
“It was actually quite funny going through that week, knowing that we were going to flood even more.”
‘HOW LONG DO YOU PERSIST WITH THIS?’
The ingenious plan worked until early in the second quarter, when the Bombers hit the front for the first time.
When Essendon’s lead stretched to 13 points, Jason Dunstall noted in commentary: “The big question now, does Terry Wallace rethink what he’s doing? How long do you go persisting with this?”
Persist Wallace and his tenacious Bulldogs did.
In a game Wallace had christened the “night of frustration”, emotions boiled over at halftime after Brad Johnson was felled by ruckman John Barnes.
Wallace rushed from his coaches box to the Docklands turf with a huge grin on his face.
“They all looked at me strangely and I said, ‘what have we dubbed the night?’ The night of frustration,” he said.
“You couldn’t have them any more frustrated.”
Essendon underlined its class to pull clear in the second half and seemed destined to celebrate its 21st consecutive win when it led by 22 points with 16 minutes to play.
It was then Wallace pulled the trigger and unleashed a Bulldog onslaught.
“They spent the whole night winning the ball, attacking, attacking, attacking,” Wallace said. “We spent the whole night sitting back in a zone defence. We hadn’t done the amount of work over the course of a game they had done.”
WALLACE, BULLDOGS ‘PULL THE TRIGGER’
With Damien Hardwick (ankle), Dean Rioli (shoulder) and Jason Johnson (knee) hurt and James Hird (back) a late withdrawal, the Bulldogs pounced on the wounded Bombers.
Chris Grant cut the deficit to 16 points to spark the revival before successive Steven Kolyniuk majors had the Dogs daring to dream.
Spare a thought for Bulldogs supporters who endured the last five minutes of one of their club’s most-famous wins.
With four and a half minutes to play, Brad Johnson’s set shot hammered into the post.
Paul Hudson missed twice, then Nathan Eagleton pulled a set shot badly left.
GRANT PUTS DOGS IN FRONT FROM BOUNDARY
The last chance before the final siren fell to Grant, who wheeled onto his left boot and buried a snap which ended Essendon’s meteoric streak at 20 wins.
“That goal at the end, it might sound strange, but I just always knew he was going to kick it. Even though he was on his left foot,” Brown said.
Grant’s matchwinning major capped a dominant night where the Bulldogs champion amassed 29 disposals, 12 marks and kicked two goals.
“Chris had always been criticised about not kicking the big goal at the big time,” Wallace said.
“That riled Chris a little bit. In my opinion it was unfair and in Chris’ opinion it was unfair.
“The one person they were comparing him to was Wayne Carey, who’s in the discussion for the best player to have ever played.
“I think it just put a few people back in their box.”
Tony Liberatore (21 disposals, nine tackles), Scott West (30 disposals) and Brown (32 disposals) were instrumental in a victory Wallace rates as the best home-and-away win of his 148-game tenure at Whitten Oval.
THE FALLOUT
The Bulldogs were unable to replicate their almighty effort in the next two weeks, crashing out in an elimination final loss to Brisbane Lions.
Essendon, meanwhile, stamped itself as one of the premier teams of the modern era by crushing North Melbourne (125 points), Carlton (45 points) and Melbourne (60 points) in finals to secure its 16th premiership.
“It’s their history. They were going for the perfect season. It’s nice to be a part of that,” Wallace said.
THE MATCH
Round 21, 2000
Western Bulldogs 14.8 (92) def Essendon 12.9 (81)
Best (as recorded in Herald Sun)
Western Bulldogs: Grant, Romero, Brown, Wynd, B.Johnson, Cox.
Essendon: Fletcher, J. Johnson, Misiti, Long, M. Johnson, Blumfield.
Goals
Western Bulldogs: Kolyniuk 3, Grant 2, Garlick 2, B. Johnson 2, Smith, Eagleton, Brown, Bartlett, Liberatore.
Essendon: Fletcher 3, Lloyd 2, Blumfield 2, M. Johnson, Mercuri, Berwick, Ramanauskas, Alessio.
https://i.postimg.cc/vTVv8Z9p/mission.png (https://postimages.org/)
It was the night mission impossible became possible.
Western Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace embraced his inner-Tom Cruise as his side prepared for footy’s tallest task — taking on the mighty Essendon side of 2000.
The Bombers were within two wins of immortality and closing in on becoming the second team in AFL history, and first since 1929, to navigate a home-and-away season undefeated.
Wallace went as far as arriving at training dressed as Cruise’s Mission Impossible character Ethan Hunt and devised a strategy which was a forerunner to the zone defence now deployed by most AFL clubs.
Drawing on a plan instigated by coaches from NFL team Denver Broncos, Wallace strangled Essendon’s lethal forward line with what was dubbed the “super flood”.
“We started to select the side at match committee early in the week and it just wasn’t matching up anywhere near the way we needed it to,” Wallace said.
“At one stage we had Mitch Hahn, who was in about his third game, matched up on James Hird.
“We just said, ‘if we go in one-on-one against them we just don’t think we’ve got the personnel … to be able to get the job done’.”
THE MIND GAMES
Wallace played the ultimate game of deception with media before the Round 21 blockbuster, telling reporters: ‘‘You’ve got to kick goals because you know they’re going to kick a score and it’s not going to be a 12-goal game similar to the Carlton one (The Bulldogs defeated Carlton by three points in Round 19, 11.9 (75) to 11.6 (72)).’’
The cunning Bulldogs fooled media — and the Bombers — by honing their novel strategy at Werribee’s Chirnside Park rather than Whitten Oval.
“We painted the ground at Werribee into grids where the players had to fall back in formation,” Wallace said.
“We did it without prying eyes, without anyone watching, because they thought we had already finished training and gone home.”
Wallace said his side needed to land the ultimate “sucker punch” if they were going to overcome one of the greatest sides of the modern era and seal a finals berth.
Star forward Nathan Brown agreed: “It was in an era where we played against the very best Geelong sides, the very best Essendon side and obviously Brisbane Lions in that threepeat,” he recalled.
“They were untouchable that year. You were still able to get to Geelong sometimes. You were still able to get to Brisbane Lions even though they won three premierships.
“But that Essendon side of 2000, when they were playing footy, they were untouchable.”
Defender Steven Kretiuk relished the mind games Wallace played with Kevin Sheedy’s undefeated Bombers.
“We knew basically what we were going to do against Essendon, but Plough was out there saying, ‘we need to have a shootout. We need to kick 25-plus goals. We can’t flood against Essendon with their tall forwards’,” Kretiuk said.
“It was actually quite funny going through that week, knowing that we were going to flood even more.”
‘HOW LONG DO YOU PERSIST WITH THIS?’
The ingenious plan worked until early in the second quarter, when the Bombers hit the front for the first time.
When Essendon’s lead stretched to 13 points, Jason Dunstall noted in commentary: “The big question now, does Terry Wallace rethink what he’s doing? How long do you go persisting with this?”
Persist Wallace and his tenacious Bulldogs did.
In a game Wallace had christened the “night of frustration”, emotions boiled over at halftime after Brad Johnson was felled by ruckman John Barnes.
Wallace rushed from his coaches box to the Docklands turf with a huge grin on his face.
“They all looked at me strangely and I said, ‘what have we dubbed the night?’ The night of frustration,” he said.
“You couldn’t have them any more frustrated.”
Essendon underlined its class to pull clear in the second half and seemed destined to celebrate its 21st consecutive win when it led by 22 points with 16 minutes to play.
It was then Wallace pulled the trigger and unleashed a Bulldog onslaught.
“They spent the whole night winning the ball, attacking, attacking, attacking,” Wallace said. “We spent the whole night sitting back in a zone defence. We hadn’t done the amount of work over the course of a game they had done.”
WALLACE, BULLDOGS ‘PULL THE TRIGGER’
With Damien Hardwick (ankle), Dean Rioli (shoulder) and Jason Johnson (knee) hurt and James Hird (back) a late withdrawal, the Bulldogs pounced on the wounded Bombers.
Chris Grant cut the deficit to 16 points to spark the revival before successive Steven Kolyniuk majors had the Dogs daring to dream.
Spare a thought for Bulldogs supporters who endured the last five minutes of one of their club’s most-famous wins.
With four and a half minutes to play, Brad Johnson’s set shot hammered into the post.
Paul Hudson missed twice, then Nathan Eagleton pulled a set shot badly left.
GRANT PUTS DOGS IN FRONT FROM BOUNDARY
The last chance before the final siren fell to Grant, who wheeled onto his left boot and buried a snap which ended Essendon’s meteoric streak at 20 wins.
“That goal at the end, it might sound strange, but I just always knew he was going to kick it. Even though he was on his left foot,” Brown said.
Grant’s matchwinning major capped a dominant night where the Bulldogs champion amassed 29 disposals, 12 marks and kicked two goals.
“Chris had always been criticised about not kicking the big goal at the big time,” Wallace said.
“That riled Chris a little bit. In my opinion it was unfair and in Chris’ opinion it was unfair.
“The one person they were comparing him to was Wayne Carey, who’s in the discussion for the best player to have ever played.
“I think it just put a few people back in their box.”
Tony Liberatore (21 disposals, nine tackles), Scott West (30 disposals) and Brown (32 disposals) were instrumental in a victory Wallace rates as the best home-and-away win of his 148-game tenure at Whitten Oval.
THE FALLOUT
The Bulldogs were unable to replicate their almighty effort in the next two weeks, crashing out in an elimination final loss to Brisbane Lions.
Essendon, meanwhile, stamped itself as one of the premier teams of the modern era by crushing North Melbourne (125 points), Carlton (45 points) and Melbourne (60 points) in finals to secure its 16th premiership.
“It’s their history. They were going for the perfect season. It’s nice to be a part of that,” Wallace said.
THE MATCH
Round 21, 2000
Western Bulldogs 14.8 (92) def Essendon 12.9 (81)
Best (as recorded in Herald Sun)
Western Bulldogs: Grant, Romero, Brown, Wynd, B.Johnson, Cox.
Essendon: Fletcher, J. Johnson, Misiti, Long, M. Johnson, Blumfield.
Goals
Western Bulldogs: Kolyniuk 3, Grant 2, Garlick 2, B. Johnson 2, Smith, Eagleton, Brown, Bartlett, Liberatore.
Essendon: Fletcher 3, Lloyd 2, Blumfield 2, M. Johnson, Mercuri, Berwick, Ramanauskas, Alessio.