Bitter Western Bulldogs hobbled by culture of blame

[BulldogBelle]

Mark Robinson
From: Herald Sun
June 15, 2011 11:22PM


WESTERN Bulldogs assistant coach Brett Montgomery effectively labelled Brian Lake mentally weak in dealing with injuries and playing with injuries.

Montgomery may be right, and good on him for speaking honestly.

But it is rare to hear a coach publicly put blame on a player. Rare outside the Bulldogs, that is. Blame is part of their culture.

Former St Kilda coach Grant Thomas has been strongly critical of the "individual" mindset at the Bulldogs, going as far back as 15 years, arguing individuals such as Luke Darcy, Chris Grant, Brad Johnson, Rohan Smith and Scott West were put on a pedestal.

While they were exalted, it was then easy to blame others for the club's lack of success.

There has always been someone to blame at the kennel. Most recent is Lake, and the excuses continue with Barry Hall's body and Adam Cooney's knee.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/af...-1226075992658

[GVGjr]

Robbo's talking rot but I don't think Monty has done the right thing by Brian or the club.

[chef]

Robbo's talking rot but I don't think Monty has done the right thing by Brian or the club.

Yep what a weird article, you could through any clubs last twenty years and say similar things.

[Ghost Dog]

Bit like the elephant dance thing they dragged out just to kick us in the guts.
However, words of ignorance with a grain of truth. Negativity can cripple.
Don't want to see Monty come out and single out any players.
Bulldogs United!

[Evel]

This is a stupid article. What was the club to do in those previous times? Just keep going along and hope everyting got better on it's lonesome?? Josh Hill deserved to be dropped, no one at the club has publicly called for Rocket's head, Joyce had clearly lost the players, Scott West could only hobble and was finished and publicly said months later his knee was still shot, Wallace on his own accord sought a different job and didn't want to be there, going back to the 70's and 80's, completely different era. Every time the club acted a period of success and strong results ensued.

If he wants to talk blame, what about Matthew Knights being the fall guy at the Bombers or Grant Thomas at the Saints. Stupid article that in itself tries to look for someone to blame.

[comrade]

Epic lulz from Robbo.

This was clearly written to stir up the in-bred mutants who lurk on the HS website, waiting to negatively comment on any Bulldogs article.

[Mofra]

Maybe I'm on my lonesome, but I think he's right.
It may also happen at other teams, but he makes a compelling argument.

[Bulldog4life]

I'm glad Robbo is quoting THE ORACLE Grant Thomas. Anything Grant says must be right. Grant certainly put together a fine leadership group at The Saints. Fine bunch of lads.Isn't it lucky that St.kilda didn't put Robert Harvey on a pedestal like we did with our champs.

[LostDoggy]

Yep what a weird article, you could through any clubs last twenty years and say similar things.

It's not even that, he's gone back 25-30 years to the times of Dempsey, Temps, etc leaving.

All filler, no killer Robbo.

[LostDoggy]

Yep what a weird article, you could through any clubs last twenty years and say similar things.

Maybe I'm on my lonesome, but I think he's right.
It may also happen at other teams, but he makes a compelling argument.

You are both probably right?
All these things could be the Dogs downfall? And as you say Chef if you look through any club's history at some point you'd see the same things, Do they perhaps show up in the said club's history when they too were having a rough trot???

I'm glad Robbo is quoting THE ORACLE Grant Thomas. Anything Grant says must be right. Grant certainly put together a fine leadership group at The Saints. Fine bunch of lads.Isn't it lucky that St.kilda didn't put Robert Harvey on a pedestal like we did with our champs.

Good one

[Evel]

Maybe I'm on my lonesome, but I think he's right.
It may also happen at other teams, but he makes a compelling argument.

I'm just not sure what he's trying to argue. He throws an accusation that we have a culture of blame, then tries to justify it loosely with past events. I could pick apart the whole article, but just to note three points he makes;

- "Josh Hill lethargic so he had to go" (paraphrase). Josh Hill has been given numerous chances this year to show his worth to the team which ended in the Geelong game. He's not the only player to be dropped this year through poor performance so according to Robbo we should have kept playing him and left out say a Dahlhaus who showed so much in his first 5 minutes of game time??

- "Westy ended his decorated career on a sour note". If I recall correctly, it was 2008, a successful year and the club made a team decision on whether West was fit enough to play for the finals. He wasn't and clearly he was done. West had a hard time coping that his career was over and I'm sure the club assisted him in every way possible. What does Robbo imply, we should have played him?? He accuses we put players on a pedestal so we should have just cleared out Westy's locker and changed the locks, but then he would leave on a sour note, hang on our fault for the sourness, get out the pedestal again. He contradicts himself.

- "Wallace left, stuff you coach". Is Robbo serious here?? We should have let him coach the last game?? From memory he had just signed or had a new deal offerred to him and he walked. Not really a sign of a club blaming the coach. Wallace basically said, "stuff you Dogs". Club did the right thing in cutting him loose early.

I could go on, but will spare you all my ramblings. Pointless article that offers nothing constructive or informative.

[Desipura]

As stated before, we overrate our own. This comes with being a team who has not won a premiership for so long. Supporters get upset and often threaten to not renew their membership if player x is delisted/retired/traded.
As a result we do not make the tough calls on individuals (Aker excluded).
Supporters take it personally when certain players are labelled slow for the modern game or not intense enough.

If we were to get a new coach, I would hope he would come straight in and move on those players that are passed it, its the only way we can move forward quickly.

[Mofra]

- "Wallace left, stuff you coach". Is Robbo serious here?? We should have let him coach the last game?? From memory he had just signed or had a new deal offerred to him and he walked. Not really a sign of a club blaming the coach. Wallace basically said, "stuff you Dogs". Club did the right thing in cutting him loose early.

My recollection is different - Wallace lost the players earlier than the 2nd last game, partly because of Grant unhappiness about his best mate (Brad Wira) being traded to Freo.
Wallace jumped before he was pushed.

In any case, how often do we hear of Geelong or the Swans during their heyday giving players a subtle bake in the media? Culturally we have a higher propensity towards this than some other teams.

[bornadog]

This comment on the article in the HUN sums it up for me.

boothy Posted at 8:14 AM Today
your not an ex-bulldog are you robbo? that knife of yours goes pretty deep. really though, is this article acheiving anything? its hardly ground breaking journalism and it reeks of akermanis all over it. if I didnt read the by-line, I would have sworn aker wrote it. some of your points may be valid, but like you said, you didnt write this article while they were winning, you wrote it now that they're losing ...

[LostDoggy]

This comment on the article in the HUN sums it up for me.

boothy Posted at 8:14 AM Today
your not an ex-bulldog are you robbo? that knife of yours goes pretty deep. really though, is this article acheiving anything? its hardly ground breaking journalism and it reeks of akermanis all over it. if I didnt read the by-line, I would have sworn aker wrote it. some of your points may be valid, but like you said, you didnt write this article while they were winning, you wrote it now that they're losing ...

Well said Boothy, thanks for posting BAD.