'Invisible' Western Bulldogs have plenty of bite: Brendan McCartney

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Brendan McCartney briefs his team during the game against Fremantle. Photo: Getty Images

Brendan McCartney has made an impassioned defence of the Western Bulldogs and his own dynamism as the club's coach, saying he is not as measured as it might seem from the outside and declaring the Dogs full of fight to return to premiership contention.

Responding to a Fairfax Media report that placed the Bulldogs last among Victorian clubs in terms of outside interest, McCartney dismissed the "relevance ladder" and backed his team to mirror the successful rebuild he helped orchestrate at Geelong in the mid-2000s.
"I'm probably not as quiet and easy-going as people [think]," McCartney said. "We've got enough intensity here. There's plenty of fight here too, don't worry. There's plenty of fight in this place.
"I've been in a club before where it didn't matter what happened, the wheels kept whirring internally, we kept working as a group, we kept working on our players. And the wheel turned. And I've got a feeling it'll happen again here."

McCartney said a coach was "a fool if you don't hear feedback", but an even bigger fool if it became a distraction.
He defied recent opponents Fremantle, Gold Coast, the Melbourne outfit the Dogs defeated before the bye or Adelaide and Essendon – who got over the Dogs in close games – to have found his team "invisible".
"I just urge people to have a look at a lot of these young people that we're playing, who are now starting to get more comfortable on an AFL ground," McCartney said.

"There were bits of play out there last Sunday [against the Dockers] where three or four of our younger players were around the ball, and they had experienced players around the ball, and we beat them. We're going to be OK here. The relevance ladder will take care of itself, I guess."

As the AFL presidents prepared to meet on Wednesday to debate the equalisation measures championed by Bulldogs president Peter Gordon, McCartney reiterated the club's pledge, made early in his tenure as coach, to "win" the west of Melbourne and make the area its heartland, and to win games.
"And every minute of every day that's what we chip away at."
Of Gordon, he said: "I loved our president fighting for us, it made me feel pretty good actually to know that our leader's prepared to fight to make it a fair landscape.

"But for all that, our responsibility is, whatever money we have and whatever resources we have, we do every single thing right by it within our power. Control what we can control."

Looking to Saturday night's home clash with Brisbane Lions, the coach predicted an immediate and telling response from his captain Ryan Griffen after he was kept to just 10 touches by Ryan Crowley against the Dockers.
"He'll play well. With due respect to his opponent, he was brilliant at what he did. All great players have a couple of days a year where they can't exert the influence they want on the game. The sort of person Ryan is, he'll bounce back, and his teammates will help.

"He's much loved and respected in here. And he's most loved because of his humility and his decency and his deep love of the club. No one tries harder here than him."

McCartney said the Dogs' training session on Wednesday morning would decide the make-up of what he tipped would be "a pretty mobile forward line" against the Lions, with Liam Jones available to return from suspension and Jarrad Grant vying for selection for his first game of 2014.

"He's close," he said of Grant. "He was three months out of the game, which is a long time. He played three quarters in the VFL, then a full game and missed a game because of the bye but played another and missed a game because of the VFL bye.
"So it hasn't been a perfect lead-in. He could be a game short, but he's close and one of the boys in the mix."




Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-new...#ixzz33dcJEmxA

Referring to opposition teams knowing we were there is completely missing the point of the 'invisible' call made - the assertion wasn't that other teams thought we were irrelevant.

And Grant still not ready? Comeonnnnnnn

The articles mentions the Geelong rebuild were do we sit as opposed to Geelong when B.Mac started as an assistant there ?

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Originally Posted by KT31

The articles mentions the Geelong rebuild were do we sit as opposed to Geelong when B.Mac started as an assistant their ?

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Bit hard to compare, Geelong got their draft picks better than not (Tenace was not a good choice, but most that draft ere not brilliant). They had good recruiter, a President that had the town in his pocket and political connections too boot. Thompson was seen as a good choice, although there were some interesting rumours with some players that left the club. They got Neil Balme to run the off field stuff a little later on and benefited from father son's for third round picks like Scarlett, GAJ and later Hawkins, allowing them to select Joel Selwood. They also traded well getting Tom Harley after he only one game at Port, managed to get Cam Mooney from North Melbourne and did what a lot of clubs find too hard to do, let a favourite son go in a big trade to get Ottens which was a master stroke. They found some gems later in JPods, and got a VFL team earlier than now. They managed to insert a culture where the players booted Stevie J and managed to turn him around too. Then Bomber had a string of now senior coaches so his support was excellent.

All in all, some many things were all going in the right direction, list, trades, drafting, culture, off field advancement etc, etc.

I think we're a long way behind where things were over Macca's time at Geelong. If we manage to have turned Grant around, trade for a Patton like type player, have a good run with father sons (4 playing TAC this year), keep the culture good, make sure the VFL team is primed, keep the AFL honest, trade well, make hard calls and genrally not make one mistake, then we are on the way. But that assessment has so many variables in it.

Geelong also gave us a host of players for draft picks, Moles, DJ and Callan. So nice of them to sell them to us.

Thank you for the insight bt.

Not sure if Geelong thought they had the right coach in 2006.
Costa and Cook also got the local council to write off a significant debt owed as well.
They've done remarkably well, but they've had some help along the way.