The Australian - Western Bulldogs share generational pride

I did a search on the forum but this article must have been missed. Sorry if this is a double post.
1-1/2 months old news :) Enjoy and re-live the moment.

AFL grand final 2016: Western Bulldogs share generational pride
Chip Le Grand

LINK

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Captains with their spoils, Easton Wood and Bob Murphy at Whitten Oval yesterday. Picture: Michael Klein



Football clubs are about more than winning games. They require money and are driven by passion. They lift human spirits and are riven with frailties. They are places of work, of friendship of family. But without a premiership, there is something missing from the picture.

For the first time in a lifetime, the Western Bulldogs are complete. It is something that most of today’s players have only an inkling of. It is something that older, retired players and hard-bitten supporters feel in their marrow.

It is something that supporters of the Sydney Swans, Saturday’s vanquished team, understood when they won the 2005 premiership, the club’s first in 72 years. It is something that St Kilda and Melbourne supporters understand only too well, having waited for half a century to see a flag.

You could see it in the faces of tens of thousands of Bulldogs fans who came to the Whitten Oval yesterday to belt out the club song and cheer their bleary-eyed heroes as each was presented on stage. You could see it on grand final night in the faces of those old Dogs who spent the best years of their lives at the club without ever knowing such a day.

Amid the crush of the winning rooms at the MCG, club cham*!pion and retired captain Luke Darcy speaks about former teammates having drifted apart, now drawn together by what today’s team has achieved.

“It almost feels like closure for everyone who played in those years, who didn’t get there,’’ he says. “It has brought so many raw emotions to the surface.’’

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A young fan hails his heroes at Whitten Oval yesterday. Picture: Eugene Hyland

Chris Grant played 351 games for Footscray and the Western Bulldogs. This year he returned to work for the club, managing its football operations. When the siren sounded on Saturday, he leapt in the air and kept on leaping, again and again.

He says the effect of this premiership will be long-lasting.

“Our supporters are proud community people but what have they actually got to bind them all together? For the rest of their lives, instead of wondering what it feels like, they will never forget this *!moment. That means everything else is done with a bit of a spring in your step. It isn’t just about footy, it’s about your life.’’

Scott West shared 15 seasons with Grant. He says the premiership belongs to today’s players but means something greater. “They have reunited the club,’’ he says.

“As past players who haven’t won a grand final, we don’t have a reason to come back together. They have brought us back together. Our club means something now.’’

Seen in this way, the Bulldogs premiership is a gift from one generation to another; in some cases, from sons of the west to their dads.

Lachie Hunter, whose father Mark played for the Bulldogs, is 21 years old. He knows the faces of many of the older men in the MCG change rooms. Some are crying for joy at what he and his teammates have done.

“I don’t know if you can appreciate the enormity of it until you are grey and old like so many men are in here who have broken down in tears,’’ Hunter says.

“It means as much to them as it does to us.’’

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The night before the grand final, Tony Liberatore watched Year of the Dogs, a brutally honest documentary about the Bulldogs’ 1996 season, when they sacked a coach, won a handful of games and, not for the first time, spent a cold winter on the brink of *!extinction.

In the film’s most famous scene, new coach Terry Wallace is shown dividing his playing list into those he wants to keep and those consigned to football’s dustbin. He slips a magnet with Liberatore’s name on it into the “no’’ column.

Why did Liberatore want to watch this again, the night before his son Tom played in a grand final? “That is the way footy is,’’ he says. “Out of bad something good will happen. That is what happened to us today.’’

Tom Liberatore looks at football in a different way. He joined his dad at his grandmother’s house for a bowl of pasta the night before grand final and, according to Tony, was more interested in whatever was on SBS than watching a 20-year-old doco about the club. Asked during Friday’s grand final parade what he was most looking forward to about the day, Tom nominated the after-party.

That party is now in full swing, and likely to go for some time yet.

Today’s Bulldogs are younger, on average, than any AFL team to win a premiership this century, and they approach the game with a freedom older footballers never knew.

Walk into the Bulldogs rooms before a match and you’ll hear music pumping as if they are getting ready for a night on the town. Walk into the rooms at half time and you’ll hear coach Luke Beveridge, not barking orders but talking in calm, reassuring tones.

After every win, the players band together to sing Australian Crawl’s ode to Errol Flynn. “He had them all, screamin’ for more, he play the wild scene…’’

They’re a quirky lot, these Dogs, and have been given licence by their coach to express their differences, rather than conform. When the game is on, there are clear team rules. When it is won, they are given leave to celebrate hard. When the Bulldogs beat *!Greater Western Sydney to reach their first grand final in 55 years, another coach might have told them to put celebrations on hold, that the job wasn’t yet done.

Not Beveridge. “His message was this is one of the greatest moments in our club’s history, whatever happens next,’’ Grant says.

“You are writing your own script, you are painting your own Picasso. Whatever happens, this moment is incredible.’’ Grant says the genius of Beveridge, a former player who scrounged together more than 100 hard-earned games with Melbourne, St Kilda and the Bulldogs, is the empathy he has for his players. “When he evaluated his group, he knew he had some almost eccentric characters. He has let them be that way.

“Footy can be a bloody serious business at times but because he has allowed them to enjoy it, he gets a huge payback.’’

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A real doggie comes out to play. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

For some Bulldogs supporters, the payback is immeasurable. “It means my whole life has come to a great moment I have waited for,’’ says Irene Chatfield, a penniless supporter who helped save her club from a merger that would have taken the Dogs from the west. Yesterday afternoon, she took a freshly printed premiership poster and tacked it to the wall of a hospital room where her 91-year-old mother Evelyn is critically ill. “She can look at the poster every day until she comes home.’’

Having waited this long for a premiership, the Western Bulldogs will be hungry for more. President Peter Gordon, who as a young, angry solicitor led the fight against the merger, is determined to keep his club off struggle street for good. “We now have a genuine opportunity to change the paradigm here, to change the balance of power,’’ he says.

Luke Darcy talks of a new club with new frontiers. For now, however, there is no need to look beyond this year, this finals series, this day, this moment.

For the Bulldogs, football is no longer a dream of what might happen next year.

Whatever else these young Dogs achieve in football and *!beyond, they will always be celebrated for what they did in the 2016 grand final; how Liam Picken took flight, how Dale Morris wrangled Lance Franklin to the ground, how a young Tom Boyd grew and grew before our eyes.

After the match, for the first time all season, there was nothing the coach *!needed to say. “I don’t have to paint a picture about how this should feel. This is it,’’ he said.

Lovely quote from Bevo during the premiership celebrations.

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I don’t have to paint a picture about how this should feel. This is it,

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He's quotable is our coach.

My favourite bit:

They’re a quirky lot, these Dogs, and have been given licence by their coach to express their differences, rather than conform. When the game is on, there are clear team rules. When it is won, they are given leave to celebrate hard. When the Bulldogs beat *!Greater Western Sydney to reach their first grand final in 55 years, another coach might have told them to put celebrations on hold, that the job wasn’t yet done.

Not Beveridge. “His message was this is one of the greatest moments in our club’s history, whatever happens next,’’ Grant says.

Bevo had turned the raw emotion that the game generates into arguably our greatest strength.

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Originally Posted by choconmientay

You could see it in the faces of tens of thousands of Bulldogs fans who came to the Whitten Oval yesterday to belt out the club song and cheer their bleary-eyed heroes as each was presented on stage. [/I]

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Many of us can say we were there!

It is now 2 months since winning our 2nd ever flag but that day at the Whitten Oval on the Sunday including training on the Thursday was special (Sat up in the Whitten Stand and took in the massive crowd) and of course the Parade and Grand Final which while many passionate Doggies people missed out unfortunately I was so fortunate to be there and witness history and something that hasn't happened to often for our club in the past but hopefully in future years will have more days like that.

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Originally Posted by Eastdog

Many of us can say will were there!

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Absolutely Easty ;)

It was a magic month and it just kept building and building to that epic finish that made every second of every bulldog supporters' journey worth it. The unbridled joy that spilled out after was wonderful to watch and be part of. I will never forget it.

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

It was a magic month and it just kept building and building to that epic finish that made every second of every bulldog supporters' journey worth it. The unbridled joy that spilled out after was wonderful to watch and be part of. I will never forget it.

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The best month in Bulldog history.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

It was a magic month and it just kept building and building to that epic finish that made every second of every bulldog supporters' journey worth it. The unbridled joy that spilled out after was wonderful to watch and be part of. I will never forget it.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eastdog

The best month in Bulldog history.

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The best month of my Life!!!! ;)