Take a breath & debrief - round 17

[Palmybulldogs]

I think we can all agree we’re pretty happy to move on quickly from this game. Ugly game, got the right result but that’s about it. Now to prepare for a couple of really tough upcoming games against Crows and Brisbane. These are massive games, we win those we can virtually lock up the top 4. Lose and we continue to fail big challenges against the top teams in the comp.


Early on, I can’t lie I was VERY worried about what Larkey was going to do to JOD/Lobb, but I thought they bounced back very well which is a credit to them


Naughton I thought was fantastic and has really been building into the season. Having him and Darcy both at their best come finals could be a huge difference in how our finals play out. Really helps him having Darcy there


This was one of Tim English’s best games I thought. I rate Xerri very very highly as a top ruckman in the game and I give Timmy the win in this contest. Probably let himself down after the first quarter against Grundy last week but really held his own last night.


Last point I want to touch on is the umpiring. I think it’s ridiculous how many Kangaroos and neutral fans are saying that the Dogs were incredibly lucky or gifted with the umpiring. I will agree that the umpires were terrible last night but it was in no way all in the Dogs favour. Maybe in the last quarter it was a bit more our way, but the first three quarters there were plenty of horrific calls/non-calls against the Dogs, so I will not cop that the umpiring cost the Roos in any way shape or form. Just a few examples of you’d like them, both from centre bounce, Bont’s run down tackle somehow not paid which led directly to a Larkey goal. Simpkin with a CLEAR AS DAY throw which leads directly to a Zurhaar goal. And that’s without mentioning the multiple examples of Darcy having his arms chopped, being tunnelled, smacked in the face, front on contract and/or marks just not being paid

[Axe Man]

Agree on the umpiring. The only howler I recall North copping was the Zurhaar mark or free against Duryea that should have been paid as one or the other. Every one of the insufficient intent frees was clear as day if you have watched any footy over the past couple of seasons. You don't have to like the rule but it was adjudicated the way it always is.

[Palmybulldogs]

Agree on the umpiring. The only howler I recall North copping was the Zurhaar mark or free against Duryea that should have been paid as one or the other. Every one of the insufficient intent frees was clear as day if you have watched any footy over the past couple of seasons. You don't have to like the rule but it was adjudicated the way it always is.

Yep 100% thought that was a really bad miss against Zurhaar had to be one or the other, but certainly not the only bad call and definitely didn’t come close to costing them the game. Baffled me how much the Roos fans were going off about the insufficient intent rules when I think every single one of them was correct

[G-Mo77]

Long time posting in a while. I've actually enjoyed footy more not typing about it so much but should throw my head in here from time to time.

I'm glad you mentioned Naughton. They were running over the top of us at stages of that first half and his performance at that point was heroic. Really good to see.

English also did well and the way he drifted forward to punish Xerri and North was obviously well planned. Players all seemed to remind Xerri every time English did it. I've been very critcial of Tim but I really think he has put together a very good season and probably doesn't get the credit he deserves.

Our back half was worrying and I'm really concerned that about JOD being one out with key forwards. Coffield is a real concern with the footy and I'm not sure Duryea brings a lot either. It's an area we need to fix or it's going to be costly over these next few weeks.

In regards to your comment on umpires Palmy it's always the underdog that was "screwed" We did get some good ones or non calls go our way in the 4th which stands out to the blind. I'm in disbelief most contests Sam Darcy is involved in, if he got half the whistle Curnow got he'd be the leading goal kicker by a country mile.

Overall we did enough. Our class got us there and kept them at arms length for most of the night. I'd like to see a lot more ferocity next week, big game. HUGE!

[Palmybulldogs]

Long time posting in a while. I've actually enjoyed footy more not typing about it so much but should throw my head in here from time to time.

I'm glad you mentioned Naughton. They were running over the top of us at stages of that first half and his performance at that point was heroic. Really good to see.

English also did well and the way he drifted forward to punish Xerri and North was obviously well planned. Players all seemed to remind Xerri every time English did it. I've been very critcial of Tim but I really think he has put together a very good season and probably doesn't get the credit he deserves.

Our back half was worrying and I'm really concerned that about JOD being one out with key forwards. Coffield is a real concern with the footy and I'm not sure Duryea brings a lot either. It's an area we need to fix or it's going to be costly over these next few weeks.

In regards to your comment on umpires Palmy it's always the underdog that was "screwed" We did get some good ones or non calls go our way in the 4th which stands out to the blind. I'm in disbelief most contests Sam Darcy is involved in, if he got half the whistle Curnow got he'd be the leading goal kicker by a country mile.

Overall we did enough. Our class got us there and kept them at arms length for most of the night. I'd like to see a lot more ferocity next week, big game. HUGE!

100% agree with everything you’ve said. That’s two weeks in a row that when really challenged, Naughton has been the one that’s really held his own and kept us in the contest

[azabob]

My biggest takeaway from the game is that our back 7 and team defense have gone backwards since 2024.

Have we made a coconscious decision to prioritise scoring?

Hopefully we are not leaving our run too late to tighten up the defensive aspects of our game.

Final wins are built on the back of a strong defense.

[Palmybulldogs]

My biggest takeaway from the game is that our back 7 and team defense have gone backwards since 2024.

Have we made a coconscious decision to prioritise scoring?

Hopefully we are not leaving our run too late to tighten up the defensive aspects of our game.

Final wins are built on the back of a strong defense.

The combo of Lobb and JOD has been serviceable but I also worry about how it’s gonna stack up in finals and against the better teams and forwards has proven to be an issue. I think we’ve taken a more agressive approach to offense which is great when it works but is also the reason we can get burnt a lot on transition

[Bornadog]

Have we made a conscious decision to prioritise scoring?

I feel we are going all out attack and when you do, defence does suffer. We are kicking big scores. The last four weeks we have kicked 20, 21, 16, 20 goals

[Bornadog]

analysis of Rucks

[SonofScray]

Decided to post this here because I feel like debriefing and venting after listening to their fans last night.

Not currently football related, because they are battling manfully, but I hate North, almost as much as Essendon, so let me go off.

Fair warning, if you are expecting rational, fair minded discourse, don’t bother. Also, please accept right now my position on North is correct and any disagreement on the points below is a reflection of the reader’s poor character and life choices. Not my objective and accurate assessments.

They’re an absolute mess of a club and while they’ll have continue to have some peaks and many troughs, the best they’ll ever be is like shit on your shoe. Shouldn’t happen, sticks around, makes life unpleasant for a while until you wash it off.

They included Shaun Higgins in their list of club champions on their big night celebrating 100 years. If that doesn’t tell you the story, you are more generous than most.

An identity built on being faux tough guys, idolising a bloke who made a career of belting blokes from behind, running cyclists off the road and fighting with kids at local footy. The sort of bloke that acts tough publicly but is likely tormented by his own trauma and depleted sense of masculinity privately. On target.

When you entered the stadium last night they had big buckets of got chips, you could take one for free, so long as a single Centennial Chip was placed on your shoulder, to symbolise the club’s ethos. Everyone is out to get us, it’s not our fault, the crowd was low because the Dogs didn’t show up, the umpires cost us the game, Rah Rah Rah, wah wah wah.

I look at North and see the worst of us. There’s a few cultural differences that have helped us not be insufferable sooks though. While we’ve often railed against the system, a lot of our angst turns inwards. In my lifetime the Club shifted away from the woe and accepted responsibility. North are no where near that. And it shows. In their footy, in their game day experience, in their events. If they serve any purpose, and they don’t, it should be a reminder not to be like them.

Being in a tier of small, struggling clubs with St Kilda is hard for them and I don’t want to kick them for the sake of it, but you can feel the resentment in their inbred membership towards a Club like ours, a growing, performing club. They have there rusted on supporters, Essendon fans in disguise, likely related. Obnoxious, self appointed arbiters of the spirit of the game, absolute dullards. Every single one of them.

[Bornadog]

Decided to post this here because I feel like debriefing and venting after listening to their fans last night.

Not currently football related, because they are battling manfully, but I hate North, almost as much as Essendon, so let me go off.

Fair warning, if you are expecting rational, fair minded discourse, don’t bother. Also, please accept right now my position on North is correct and any disagreement on the points below is a reflection of the reader’s poor character and life choices. Not my objective and accurate assessments.

They’re an absolute mess of a club and while they’ll have continue to have some peaks and many troughs, the best they’ll ever be is like shit on your shoe. Shouldn’t happen, sticks around, makes life unpleasant for a while until you wash it off.

They included Shaun Higgins in their list of club champions on their big night celebrating 100 years. If that doesn’t tell you the story, you are more generous than most.

An identity built on being faux tough guys, idolising a bloke who made a career of belting blokes from behind, running cyclists off the road and fighting with kids at local footy. The sort of bloke that acts tough publicly but is likely tormented by his own trauma and depleted sense of masculinity privately. On target.

When you entered the stadium last night they had big buckets of got chips, you could take one for free, so long as a single Centennial Chip was placed on your shoulder, to symbolise the club’s ethos. Everyone is out to get us, it’s not our fault, the crowd was low because the Dogs didn’t show up, the umpires cost us the game, Rah Rah Rah, wah wah wah.

I look at North and see the worst of us. There’s a few cultural differences that have helped us not be insufferable sooks though. While we’ve often railed against the system, a lot of our angst turns inwards. In my lifetime the Club shifted away from the woe and accepted responsibility. North are no where near that. And it shows. In their footy, in their game day experience, in their events. If they serve any purpose, and they don’t, it should be a reminder not to be like them.

Being in a tier of small, struggling clubs with St Kilda is hard for them and I don’t want to kick them for the sake of it, but you can feel the resentment in their inbred membership towards a Club like ours, a growing, performing club. They have there rusted on supporters, Essendon fans in disguise, likely related. Obnoxious, self appointed arbiters of the spirit of the game, absolute dullards. Every single one of them.

Totally agree with you SOS. I hated being at the ground last night surrounded by their supporters. Whining all night long about free kicks yet the free kick count was even through the night. I mentioned in another thread the two guys behind me yelling the entire match for Frees, 50m, complaining the whole time. I should have got up and changed seats. Finally with 5 minutes to go the bloke next to me told them to stop whining. Their response was lets go outside and I will fix you up. He turned out to be a WB employee and went off to report them.

I never use to care much about them, but in the 70s, the VFL changed every rule of recruitment and drafting to get North a flag. Some young supporters won't know about the ten year rule designed to gift North star players from various clubs to help them to their first premiership. We as a club have had no leg up from the VFL and we have achieved everything by stopping being a loser club (unlike North). They should have taken the opportunity to relocate to Tassie, they would be better off.

The Good Friday fiasco where they asked the AFL to not play us when we were promised we would have it with North as a Marque game - **** them. Many other examples of what they are like.

[merantau]

Totally agree with you SOS. I hated being at the ground last night surrounded by their supporters. Whining all night long about free kicks yet the free kick count was even through the night. I mentioned in another thread the two guys behind me yelling the entire match for Frees, 50m, complaining the whole time. I should have got up and changed seats. Finally with 5 minutes to go the bloke next to me told them to stop whining. Their response was lets go outside and I will fix you up. He turned out to be a WB employee and went off to report them.

I never use to care much about them, but in the 70s, the VFL changed every rule of recruitment and drafting to get North a flag. Some young supporters won't know about the ten year rule designed to gift North star players from various clubs to help them to their first premiership. We as a club have had no leg up from the VFL and we have achieved everything by stopping being a loser club (unlike North). They should have taken the opportunity to relocate to Tassie, they would be better off.

The Good Friday fiasco where they asked the AFL to not play us when we were promised we would have it with North as a Marque game - **** them. Many other examples of what they are like.

All true. I noticed Carey out there last night.

[The bulldog tragician]

Decided to post this here because I feel like debriefing and venting after listening to their fans last night.

Not currently football related, because they are battling manfully, but I hate North, almost as much as Essendon, so let me go off.

Fair warning, if you are expecting rational, fair minded discourse, don’t bother. Also, please accept right now my position on North is correct and any disagreement on the points below is a reflection of the reader’s poor character and life choices. Not my objective and accurate assessments.

They’re an absolute mess of a club and while they’ll have continue to have some peaks and many troughs, the best they’ll ever be is like shit on your shoe. Shouldn’t happen, sticks around, makes life unpleasant for a while until you wash it off.

They included Shaun Higgins in their list of club champions on their big night celebrating 100 years. If that doesn’t tell you the story, you are more generous than most.

An identity built on being faux tough guys, idolising a bloke who made a career of belting blokes from behind, running cyclists off the road and fighting with kids at local footy. The sort of bloke that acts tough publicly but is likely tormented by his own trauma and depleted sense of masculinity privately. On target.

When you entered the stadium last night they had big buckets of got chips, you could take one for free, so long as a single Centennial Chip was placed on your shoulder, to symbolise the club’s ethos. Everyone is out to get us, it’s not our fault, the crowd was low because the Dogs didn’t show up, the umpires cost us the game, Rah Rah Rah, wah wah wah.

I look at North and see the worst of us. There’s a few cultural differences that have helped us not be insufferable sooks though. While we’ve often railed against the system, a lot of our angst turns inwards. In my lifetime the Club shifted away from the woe and accepted responsibility. North are no where near that. And it shows. In their footy, in their game day experience, in their events. If they serve any purpose, and they don’t, it should be a reminder not to be like them.

Being in a tier of small, struggling clubs with St Kilda is hard for them and I don’t want to kick them for the sake of it, but you can feel the resentment in their inbred membership towards a Club like ours, a growing, performing club. They have there rusted on supporters, Essendon fans in disguise, likely related. Obnoxious, self appointed arbiters of the spirit of the game, absolute dullards. Every single one of them.

I thought their 100 year celebration was very lacklustre. There was no sense of occasion, it bordered on embarrassing and flat, and I too scratched my head to see noted Shinboner Shaun Higgins out there, wtf. Pagan’s speech did not hit the mark.

The sight of serial abuser of women Wayne Carey always makes me ill yet there was some sort of petulant stoush where past players including noted intellect Sam Kekovich boycotted the occasion because the AFLW premiership was also celebrated.

Music after every goal does not create atmosphere. Turning up to games does. Our fans were in equal numbers I thought which means a generous assessment is that only 14000 Kangaroo fans could be bothered to attend a milestone - of survival - which for us smaller clubs is always worth celebrating.

[Palmybulldogs]

Totally agree with you SOS. I hated being at the ground last night surrounded by their supporters. Whining all night long about free kicks yet the free kick count was even through the night. I mentioned in another thread the two guys behind me yelling the entire match for Frees, 50m, complaining the whole time. I should have got up and changed seats. Finally with 5 minutes to go the bloke next to me told them to stop whining. Their response was lets go outside and I will fix you up. He turned out to be a WB employee and went off to report them.

I never use to care much about them, but in the 70s, the VFL changed every rule of recruitment and drafting to get North a flag. Some young supporters won't know about the ten year rule designed to gift North star players from various clubs to help them to their first premiership. We as a club have had no leg up from the VFL and we have achieved everything by stopping being a loser club (unlike North). They should have taken the opportunity to relocate to Tassie, they would be better off.

The Good Friday fiasco where they asked the AFL to not play us when we were promised we would have it with North as a Marque game - **** them. Many other examples of what they are like.

I don’t have a dislike as strong as you two on North, although I can’t disagree that them, along with St Kilda have taken an approach where it seems to be everybody else’s fault that they are struggling and refuse to take any responsibility to get better. I had a mate who supports Collingwood blaming the Dogs for the poor crowd which I simply just could not cop (he only brought it up because I mentioned how shitty it was that we play at the G twice a year and they constantly get 10+. This point was also just that the Dogs should get more, not necessarily Pies should get less). I basically responded also by saying how tough it’s been for the Dogs to increase their fan base with shitty situations like the Good Friday game being taken off us just because North were non-competitive so their fans stopped rocking up on the day. We have precisely 0 marquee games and I’m still mad at the kangaroos for their part in that game being taken off us

[Curly5]

I think we can all agree we’re pretty happy to move on quickly from this game. Ugly game, got the right result but that’s about it. Now to prepare for a couple of really tough upcoming games against Crows and Brisbane. These are massive games, we win those we can virtually lock up the top 4. Lose and we continue to fail big challenges against the top teams in the comp.


Early on, I can’t lie I was VERY worried about what Larkey was going to do to JOD/Lobb, but I thought they bounced back very well which is a credit to them


Naughton I thought was fantastic and has really been building into the season. Having him and Darcy both at their best come finals could be a huge difference in how our finals play out. Really helps him having Darcy there


This was one of Tim English’s best games I thought. I rate Xerri very very highly as a top ruckman in the game and I give Timmy the win in this contest. Probably let himself down after the first quarter against Grundy last week but really held his own last night.


Last point I want to touch on is the umpiring. I think it’s ridiculous how many Kangaroos and neutral fans are saying that the Dogs were incredibly lucky or gifted with the umpiring. I will agree that the umpires were terrible last night but it was in no way all in the Dogs favour. Maybe in the last quarter it was a bit more our way, but the first three quarters there were plenty of horrific calls/non-calls against the Dogs, so I will not cop that the umpiring cost the Roos in any way shape or form. Just a few examples of you’d like them, both from centre bounce, Bont’s run down tackle somehow not paid which led directly to a Larkey goal. Simpkin with a CLEAR AS DAY throw which leads directly to a Zurhaar goal. And that’s without mentioning the multiple examples of Darcy having his arms chopped, being tunnelled, smacked in the face, front on contract and/or marks just not being paid

Fans whose teams lose to us ALWAYS raise the trope that we are gifted games with undeserved frees, or they were denied free kicks. It’s painful, tedious and dishonest. They hate giving us any credit for some reason.