If defence wins premierships, then Luke Beveridge hasn’t got long to turn things around for the Western Bulldogs.
Ahead of what should be a fiery and, gut-feeling says, winnable contest against Brisbane on Friday night, the Bulldogs are once again under the microscope.
Having had a first-hand view of the entertaining game against Adelaide, the fears are being realised. This is a list that is prodigiously talented … offensively.
But whenever they lose, it’s always ‘how could they lose with that midfield?’, or ‘Marcus Bontempelli was incredible, how’d they stuff that up?’
In recent times, it’s ‘how do you not win when Sam Darcy and Aaron Naughton are having nearly 10 shots at goal a game?’
Everyone single one of those questions can plausibly be applied to their loss to Crows. The answer is pretty simple, and it has been glaringly obvious all season: Adelaide had 29 scoring shots from 52 inside 50s, while taking 17 marks inside 50. Those are obscenely bad numbers.
Any hopes of that being an aberration will have to be laid to rest, because oh boy, have the Bulldogs been bad defensively this season.
On paper, they’re right in the middle for points conceded, but that’s never the telltale sign of defensive prowess or failure – although it’s not good.
Ahead of Round 19, the Bulldogs have won just one of their eight games against teams currently in the top eight.
Their defensive numbers overall have been bad: they’re conceding a shot just over 52 per cent of the time they concede an inside 50, ranked third-worst in the league. The Dogs are also giving up a goal over a quarter of the time their defensive arc is breached, too – also ranked third-worst.
Given their opponents’ accuracy is right around league average, that’s not good.
They’re one of the worst teams in the AFL at defending transition, with a large portion of their scores against coming out of the back half – whether it be directly from kick-ins or just ball movement off the half-back flank.
Teams playing the Dogs take a mark inside 50 with over a quarter of their entries, with Brisbane at 24 per cent the only other team in the top nine above 21.1 per cent.
Topping it all off, they’re one of the worst tackling teams in the league as well, which is forcing fewer clangers than almost every other good team forces
Finally, they’re the worst one-on-one team in the league, defensively.
In their eight games against the current top eight, their percentages against balloon even further in every category. It’s embarrassing.
The incredible offensive firepower is pulling the wool over some people’s eyes. In reality, they think they’re the prime Golden State Warriors, while completely ignoring the defensive stalwarts. They’re really playing like a team of James Hardens.
Marcus Bontempelli looks dejected after a Bulldogs loss. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The running fix in 2025 is for Beveridge to try and minimise the number of inside 50s the Bulldogs concede, rather than implement any specific defensive solution.
Consider this – the Bulldogs’ midfield is dominant in clearance situations, so they should be able tp control field position in that way. If they can create stoppages across half-forward, defenders can push up, and when it’s time to go into possession mode, that would be done from half-back, rather than deeper.
It works, too: the Bulldogs are currently conceding the fewest number of inside 50s per game (47.1) in the AFL – and it’s not particularly close. But if you consider their defensive inefficiency, it’s really a volcano ready to erupt.
Quite unsurprisingly, in the eight games against the better teams in the league, that number rises to 52 per game – and boy, does it show.
It’s easy to blame the coach for everything – Carlton and Michael Voss are a nice little example of that – but when the personnel is lacking, there’s only so much Beveridge can do.
In 2024, the Bulldogs were imperfect defensively, but were still hovering around the league average in the key metrics previously discussed. They weren’t good in one-on-ones (though still better than this year), but the remedy was to reduce them to only nine per game, amongst the fewest in the league. That’s why Liam Jones’ scrambling help in defence was effective, while Rory Lobb’s switch to the backline was otherworldly.
Last year, they squeezed harder up the ground, forced more high balls in and were one of the best intercepting teams in the league, averaging the third-most intercept marks per game.
In 2025, their pressure is down, and so are the long, high kicks for the opposition. They’re conceding nearly two more defensive one-on-ones per game, at the worst losing rate we’ve seen in a while, and their intercept mark numbers have dropped closer to league average.
Against Adelaide, with their three key forwards in Riley Thilthorpe, Taylor Walker and Darcy Fogarty, the Bulldogs felt undersized and undermanned.
They have gone away from Jones for large stretches this season – not that he had been performing well anyway – but to see Nick Coffield marking a tall for large portions, or rotating on Izak Rankine with Bailey Williams needing to provide coverage when not, wasn’t a good look.
Lobb has been alright, but even he is ranked highly in the ‘reverse Coleman’ and has lost over a third of his contested one-on-ones in the last month.
James O’Donnell has got a lot of talent but isn’t ready to be the main full back. His intercepting is good, he reads the play well, but he has lost 41 per cent of his one-on-ones. Awful.
Both need another player to help them when they can’t help each other.
Where Taylor Duryea was once a reliable head at ground-level, his drop-off at 34 years of age has made him unselectable. Luke Cleary and Coffield are swapping the attempted lockdown role recently, and the latter has been picked to face the Lions, but do they try Michael Sellwood or even Buku Khamis back at some stage?
The absence of a reliable small defender has forced Williams to play in defence, as opposed to playing on a wing and using his strong defensive running traits to help out the backs.
That structural shift hast resulted in first-year player Sam Davidson now occupying a wing role. It’s a clear shift from a focus on defending the transition to pure offence.
That’s not Davidson’s fault, but Williams’ function was enormous in 2024, and while his importance is not lost, that role is.
Right now, the answer is to bring Jones back in, slide everyone down a spot and hope that he’s a lot better than he was prior to being dropped earlier in the season. That should give the team a little boost, particularly against the Lions, where the midfield is both teams’ strongest suit.
The Dogs can cover the Lions by going a little stronger in defence and focusing on trying to overwhelm Brisbane’s half-backs with stoppages and less space to work in.
But all of these short-term measures are just that – until it’s properly addressed in the off-season.
The Bulldogs have developed their midfield into a dangerously varied and dynamic group, while they possess the single most devastating offensive talent the league has seen in a long time in Sam Darcy.
But until they focus on the defensive side of the game, whether it be from the wings or the actual key defensive posts, for which a recruit is desperately needed, the ceiling remains low on this group.
Youngster Jedd Busslinger, while Dogs fans clamour to see him at senior level, is probably not going to turn into a lockdown player, and neither is developing father-son Jordan Croft.
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If it isn’t a frontline key defender recruited, then let it be a strong body who can fill a role in the meantime; a James Borlase from Adelaide or Tylar Young from Richmond, or even any of the top state league options in the mould of a Callum Wilkie or Toby Pink. Strength over height at a cheap rate to fill a gap is most important.
For now, Beveridge is doing all he can to paper over the cracks at the Bulldogs, and returning to the old guard is a last-ditch attempt to capture something in a game that, if won, will put much at ease.
Let’s just hope what’s bubbling under the surface doesn’t rise, though – otherwise it could be scarring for these Bulldogs for years to come.
