Things for media & industry haters to discredit a possible Bulldogs Premiership?

[Bulldog4life]

Why is Barassi somehow a sentimental talisman, I’d like to know.

Because he is Mrs. Football as Teddy regularly told him.

[The bulldog tragician]

Because he is Mrs. Football as Teddy regularly told him.

It's more about some ridiculous notion of winning it for him as though he was a Melbourne icon.. He is just as strongly associated with North, Carlton and Sydney and his evangelism about a national competition would have seen clubs like melb go to the wall - not that their supporters put up much of a fight on this, voting to merge with Hawthorn.

[Sedat]

Let the salty tears flow! It's still fun dealing with ''The Dogs only won the 2016 flag cause of the umpires yadda yadda yadda...''

And the pre-finals bye. That's a favourite go-to for Chris Scott - maybe he can get a special exemption to visit the nursing home and tell his senior players again.

[Ozza]

Let the salty tears flow! It's still fun dealing with ''The Dogs only won the 2016 flag cause of the umpires yadda yadda yadda...''

Texted mates on the weekend at half time that "Free kicks are 14-6 in Port's favour. The umpires have had no influence, but if it was 14-6 in our favour everyone would be saying that 'the bulldogs get all the free kicks'."

On that note, was interesting to hear Bob Murphy say that it was a specific strategy from Bevo when he arrived at the club to play in a way that avoids giving away unnecessary free kicks. Its smart strategy - but nobody who reports on football is clued up enough to discuss WHY were are usually on the better end of the count. We choose to take up the front spot as defenders, even if this means we occasionally get done out the back. We are otherwise determined to be first in at the ball and tackle with good technique.

[comrade]

Texted mates on the weekend at half time that "Free kicks are 14-6 in Port's favour. The umpires have had no influence, but if it was 14-6 in our favour everyone would be saying that 'the bulldogs get all the free kicks'."

On that note, was interesting to hear Bob Murphy say that it was a specific strategy from Bevo when he arrived at the club to play in a way that avoids giving away unnecessary free kicks. Its smart strategy - but nobody who reports on football is clued up enough to discuss WHY were are usually on the better end of the count. We choose to take up the front spot as defenders, even if this means we occasionally get done out the back. We are otherwise determined to be first in at the ball and tackle with good technique.

Bevo specifically mentioned in his presser that he was unhappy with some undisciplined free kicks we gave away in the 3rd as Port were pressing. It's clearly by design that we do whatever we can not to cough up free kicks and let the opposition take possession.

[jeemak]

He literally said in the media in 2016 that we train/ play specifically to avoid giving away free kicks. It's hidden in plain sight!

[bulldogtragic]

He literally said in the media in 2016 that we train/ play specifically to avoid giving away free kicks. It's hidden in plain sight!

So you’re saying we duck to get free kicks?

[choconmientay]

Got to work this morning and my peers seemed to run a hidden agenda against us and trying to get the Daemon to this years premiership.
- 1 salty Bomber supporter
- 1 not so happy Brisbane supporter
- 2 bitter Swan supporters, still not getting over 2016
- Others wanted to have a PS just for Daniher (because he deserved it ...)
- Others wanted Deamon PS just because they haven't won anything for soo long.

- None for the dogs. I am back to the wall. Go doggggss!. May need to consider swapping work team, company.

[Grantysghost]

Got to work this morning and my peers seemed to run a hidden agenda against us and trying to get the Daemon to this years premiership.
- 1 salty Bomber supporter
- 1 not so happy Brisbane supporter
- 2 bitter Swan supporters, still not getting over 2016
- Others wanted to have a PS just for Daniher (because he deserved it ...)
- Others wanted Deamon PS just because they haven't won anything for soo long.

- None for the dogs. I am back to the wall. Go doggggss!. May need to consider swapping work team, company.

It's what we've always wanted as Dogs fans... To be good! No more sympathy, no more poor old Dogs nice to see them win a game.
No fk that!
We are good, they know it, they hate it (westies should know their place!) so embrace it mate...! Means we are doing it right.

[Ozza]

Not sure which thread is most appropriate - maybe its the 'anti' things to discredit us.....

But I absolutely love how the whole club has handled every bit of the last 3-4 weeks. All the travel and over the top protocols and testing. The fact that we didn't bemoan the Brisbane timekeeper which essentially cost us top 4 publicly - we just pushed on, and even soldiered on about playing in Launceston rather than the preferred Adelaide. And really the only dissent from our club in the whole time was Bevo going hard about not being able to train before the game - which I think may have been more for the players and the 'us against them' anyway, with him using it tactically.

We avoid the Chris Scott style excuses model entirely which I think contributes to our success this month.

Bevo is having a very good month on a number of fronts really. He's at his best. And his 7-3 finals record has him as the second highest all time win % of all coaches that have had 10 finals or more.

[Twodogs]

You what now?

I'm full of surprises.

[bulldogsthru&thru]

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/tea...-pXkiLMi9HqTyo

It’s begun. Would they have preferred to travel for 4 weeks and live in a hotel room with minimal training? We’re gonna have to go all the way back to the very first finals series to find the only even premier I think.
Also the article says we get back Keath and Weightman with the bye but Melbourne “only” have May racing the clock. Well, Cody would have played no matter when the game was. And they also failed to do any comparison of the number of teams between 00-15 who lost the prelim after winning the first week. They just said “a much worse %”. Great journalism and analysis here.

An unfair Dees-advantage? Why pre-GF bye and ‘glorified practice match’ may hurt Melbourne

Brisbane champion Jonathan Brown believes Melbourne is disadvantaged by the pre-Grand Final bye, playing just one game in 28 days which he called a "glorified practice match”.

Having won their qualifying final and earning a bye week, along with the bye between the preliminary finals and Grand Final, the Demons will head into September 25 having played just one game since August 28.

It’s an issue reminiscent of the pre-finals bye, used between 2016 and 2020, which saw qualifying final winners playing just one game in four weeks heading into their home preliminary finals.

Those sides appeared impacted by the lack of match practice, winning just four of their 10 home prelims, a much worse percentage than 2000-15 when there was no pre-finals bye.

The Western Bulldogs will use the bye to recover from three consecutive finals wins, and it will ensure key defender Alex Keath (hamstring) and young forward Cody Weightman (concussion) can recover from injuries.

Only Steven May, who felt hamstring tightness during the comfortable preliminary final win over Geelong, is racing the clock to play in the Grand Final for Melbourne.

On Fox Footy’s On the Couch, Brown argued the Demons will be disadvantaged by the combination of the bye and a woeful Geelong outfit which barely challenged them.

“I think it’s a really interesting case study, and it’s advantage Western Bulldogs for mine. Melbourne are clearly rock hard and fit, but there’s no substitute for matches,” he said.

“Unfortunately Friday night, I might’ve altered my opinion slightly if they’d had a hard match, but that was a glorified practice match. Some Geelong players were sick and they absolutely demolished them.

“They’re gonna play one game in 28 days, so the deconditioning aspect is a concern for mine, whereas the Bulldogs they need the break. They get a couple of players back from injury, Keath and Weightman, obviously Stefan Martin will be freshened up after his first game back, they look like they’re peaking nicely and a freshen-up will be perfect for them.

“Ultimately we have to wait two weeks to find out, but that’s a little concern for me; the Demons conditioners are gonna have to be absolutely on their A-game for the next fortnight to get these guys in ripping nick.”

The Demons had a light training session on Monday and will play an intra-club scratch match on Saturday.


“We’re very lucky that we had the experience two weeks ago where we were in this exact position and we’re putting our trust in the experts,” Alex Neal-Bullen told reporters on Monday.

“(Performance manager) Darren Burgess is going to put in a program that we trust, and this is our day one of building towards Saturday in two weeks’ time.

“We’ve got a massive hit-out on Saturday that we’re looking forward to that we’ll prepare for like a game, and hopefully get a lot out of.

“I’m that confident in the group we have here that we’ll perform at the level again if we do everything right over the next 14 days.”


St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt pointed out that we’ll only know for sure if a team was advantaged in the aftermath - and even then, we won’t really know if the bye was a factor - using an example from his past.

When his Saints drew with Collingwood in 2010, the two sides had different post-game plans.

“We’ll only know if it was helpful or not retrospectively; for the winning club, they’ll have found little wins in it somewhere along the line, and for the side that loses, they will have done something wrong,” he said on Fox Footy.

“2010, when we lost the replay, we didn’t go to our after-match function and Collingwood did. And that many people want to draw the correlation between those decisions, and one was right and one was wrong, because of the result the next week.”

[jeemak]

One in 28 sounds bad, but three in thirty doesn't sound as rough.

[bulldogtragic]

Covid ruined it. If the game was at the MCG, their home ground it’s a 100% different result…. Put an * next to this years GF because they were denied a home GF……

[bornadog]

Covid ruined it. If the game was at the MCG, their home ground it’s a 100% different result…. Put an * next to this years GF because they were denied a home GF……

and they only had 2 games in 28 days due to Covid