Cornes in The Age: The damning signs that show Beveridge is steering the Dogs off course

[The bulldog tragician]

Kane Cornes in The Age: The damning signs that show Beveridge is steering the Dogs

Luke Beveridge and Leon Cameron graduated to AFL senior coaching from the Alastair Clarkson finishing school, a year apart.

Cameron went to Greater Western Sydney in 2013 and ? as is often said ? was handed the keys to the Ferrari, a high-performance machine he could not drive to success.

Beveridge joined the Western Bulldogs in 2014 and two years later ? with a patched-up, banged up unit starting from sixth on the finals grid ? won a drought-breaking premiership.

Now, after a refit of the Bulldogs squad, Beveridge is living Cameron?s overwhelming challenge. He has a shiny new Mercedes, and the tank is full of high-octane fuel, but the vehicle?s GPS is broken.

In nine seasons as senior coach, Cameron could not craft a premiership-winning blueprint to match the extraordinary talent and speed the Giants possessed. He took the so-called orange tsunami ? that dynamic game plan that Cameron strangely lost faith in ? to five finals series, culminating in the 2019 grand final disappointment. The critics won out.

Beveridge is now in Cameron?s seat as the driver challenged to navigate a powerful engine many other AFL coaches would be envious to drive. The horrendous opening to the season shows Beveridge is steering the Mercedes way off course.


The AFL?s best coaches have left Beveridge in their dust.

The Western Bulldogs cannot defend. Since winning the 2016 premiership, they have ranked in the bottom nine teams for conceding a score from an opposition inside-50. To put this into perspective, 15 out of the past 18 premiers have ranked top six in this indicator.

More damning, the Bulldogs were ranked 15th of 18 for defending the opposition?s ball movement from the defensive 50 last season. Despite a full pre-season to address this glaring weakness, Beveridge could not devise a plan to stop Melbourne on last Saturday. The Demons scored 50 points from their defensive 50; the league average is 12.

The Bulldogs? list wants for nothing. It has the league?s best midfield, led by captain and four-time All-Australian Marcus Bontempelli. Tom Liberatore, Adam Treloar, Bailey Smith and Jack Macrae are prolific and young ruckman Tim English is elite. Half-backs Caleb Daniel and Bailey Dale are All-Australians, and Aaron Naughton is one of the game?s best key forwards.

Beveridge once faced a void with key-position defenders, but after claiming Liam Jones as a free agent and being gifted father-son wunderkind Sam Darcy in 2021, he no longer has this excuse.

Adding to Beveridge?s woes is his inability to halt the opposition?s momentum. In the 2021 grand final, the Bulldogs led by 19 points midway through the third quarter but lost the game by 74 points. Melbourne kicked 12 unanswered goal, and Beveridge?s Mercedes went way off course.

The script was repeated in last year?s elimination final against Fremantle. The Bulldogs coughed up a 41-point lead to lose by 13 points.

Josh Dunkley won the Western Bulldogs? best and fairest award last season after announcing he would leave to join the Brisbane Lions. When comparing Brisbane?s pre-season training to his former club, Dunkley noted that the Bulldogs hardly ran in the pre-season. Could a lack of fitness be a reason for their fadeouts in big games? Melbourne kicked eight goals to the Bulldogs? four in the second half on Saturday night.

Adding to the club?s troubles is Beveridge?s repeated bizarre public comments.

Before the 2021 grand final, he fired back at criticism of Treloar with this: ?If you?re going to fail in life, fail at something that is noble. Fail at something you can dust yourself off and be proud that you had a go.

?If you?re failing at trying to pull people apart and bring people down, like two or three journalists did this week, I don?t know how people around you can live with you, how they can lie in bed with you, how they can look at themselves in the mirror.?

In the post-game media conference after last year?s season-opener, Beveridge launched an extraordinary personal attack on journalist Tom Morris.

After the round 10 win against Gold Coast last season, he vaguely questioned the tactics of Suns defender Sam Collins on Naughton. On review, Collins? method was entirely within the rules.

Beveridge was due to come out of contract at the end of this season. However, the club surprisingly and prematurely extended his deal to the end of 2025.

It would have been wiser for the Bulldogs board to wait until the midway point of the season to gather more evidence on whether Beveridge can fix the broken navigation system in the shiny new Mercedes.

Adam Kingsley eventually inherited the keys to the GWS Ferrari; only time will tell whether Beveridge?s mechanics can fix his broken GPS or whether the Merc needs a new driver.

[bornadog]

Every year Kane writes a negative article about Bevo

[Bulldog4life]

Every year Kane writes a negative article about Bevo

90% old news too.

[jeemak]

Jesus.

That's an out and out attack, and completely incoherent. I mean even for Corn Kanes.

Bevo isn't going to be spared this season by anyone, but mostly not by us fans. But what does the smarmy little shit want after a first game **** up? The shiny pressed mother****er needs to pull his head in.

[josie]

Our defence all over the ground has been poor for some time. Most of the rest of the article, as well as some glaring factual errors (thanks BTragician for ? those), is sensationalist tripe. Most footy journalism is drivel.

Given coaches only need to be paid 6 months if sacked extending a coaches tenure and showing confidence in them doesn’t seem so crazy to me. I’ve given up watching footy programs and listening to radio programs. I read the articles posted on woof, and perhaps peek at what afl has on their website (amazing how they have little or no articles on the important topic of concussion). Life’s too short to pay much attention to nufties and HQ psychophants (spelling intentional).

[The bulldog tragician]

Our defence all over the ground has been poor for some time. Most of the rest of the article, as well as some glaring factual errors (thanks BTragician for ? those), is sensationalist tripe. Most footy journalism is drivel.

Given coaches only need to be paid 6 months if sacked extending a coaches tenure and showing confidence in them doesn?t seem so crazy to me. I?ve given up watching footy programs and listening to radio programs. I read the articles posted on woof, and perhaps peek at what afl has on their website (amazing how they have little or no articles on the important topic of concussion). Life?s too short to pay much attention to nufties and HQ psychophants (spelling intentional).

I?m not sure why, but something is screwy when I post, meaning quote marks ? are replaced by question marks ?

[GVGjr]

I?m not sure why, but something is screwy when I post, meaning quote marks ? are replaced by question marks ?

I think it's the forums issue, I'm noticing it as well with ' and ? It might have something to do with copy and paste from other sites.
I even had to fix some of the user names and their signatures.
I'll get the tech guy to review it.

[Grantysghost]

I think it's the forums issue, I'm noticing it as well with ' and ? It might have something to do with copy and paste from other sites.
I even had to fix some of the user names and their signatures.
I'll get the tech guy to review it.

Be something to do with the character set. Basically the source is using one that has characters this forum doesn't understand.

Try pasting into a middle man like word first or even notepad as it may strip the unknown characters.

Gaz you may want to extend the character sets the forum supports I think unicode 15 is the most recent.

[Danjul]

I think it's the forums issue, I'm noticing it as well with ' and ? It might have something to do with copy and paste from other sites.
I even had to fix some of the user names and their signatures.
I'll get the tech guy to review it.

I use an iPad and it happens a lot.

Could it be the metadata tag at the top of the webpage needs

<meta ….. charset=UTF-8 >

[macca]

@Danjul, I did not get to read your post , but your spot on, its the character set used by the webpage on woof = UTF-8

[josie]

I?m not sure why, but something is screwy when I post, meaning quote marks ? are replaced by question marks ?

Thanks. Ah-ha ha-I thought they are errors you?d picked up!! Eg wasn?t it from 7th not 6th we won premiership in ?16 etc. attributional errors about errors, must be a term for that.

[macca]

I?m not sure why, but something is screwy when I post, meaning quote marks ? are replaced by question marks ?

@BT , If you copy from other websites, the character set encoding may NOT be interpreted in the quick reply field correctly. The source website and the "quick reply" field may have different character SETS encoding. A synonym in laymans terms, would be like using TimesRoman Font vs Symbols font.

Hello <-- times roman font

Hello <-- symbol font

One way to get around this is to copy and paste into notepad ( if your windows user) and then copy the notepad text , into the "quick reply" part.

[jeemak]

Our defence across the ground in 2021 was top five. We can do it, we just need to do it....or believe we can do it.....or something that results in us doing it.....

[Happy Days]

Our defence across the ground in 2021 was top five. We can do it, we just need to do it....or believe we can do it.....or something that results in us doing it.....

That’s the difference between an Alex Keath with and without whatever ligaments in your knees that lets you move laterally. Al was legitimately a top 3 key defender in 2021 and fell off a cliff in that off season.

[jeemak]

That’s the difference between an Alex Keath with and without whatever ligaments in your knees that lets you move laterally. Al was legitimately a top 3 key defender in 2021 and fell off a cliff in that off season.

And what happens forward of centre with McSteal and a few others playing out of their skins/ with a lot of eagerness and putting some pressure on the out-ball.