Friday night at the Gabba was about as well as the Western Bulldogs can possibly play.
They tackled tremendously. They kicked accurately in front of goal. They fought tooth and nail from start to finish. Marcus Bontempelli strapped the Superman cape on in the final quarter.
And it still wasn’t close to being enough.
A ten-point loss to Brisbane, swelled to double figures at the final siren by Will Ashcroft’s third goal, absolutely flatters the Bulldogs.
It would have been an utter travesty had they pinched a match in which only the Lions’ remarkable inaccuracy, both in front of goal and in kicking inside 50 in the second half, prevented this match from being shot to pieces halfway through the third quarter.
In the end, it’s a similar story to the eight previous defeats the Dogs have endured to the eight teams currently above them on the ladder. More or less outplayed for three and a half quarters, only to cut the margin with a flurry of goals in the last quarter to either make the scoreline respectable or give them the chance at pinching four points.
In reality, though, surely Luke Beveridge and his troops know that to fall into the trap of thinking they’re only ten points behind one of this season’s standard-bearers in the Lions is a mirage. That would be ignoring the significant issues, nearly all of them structural, that anyone remotely good this season has ruthlessly exposed every single time they have taken to the park.
The talk all week, including from Dem Panopoulos on this website on Friday, is the Dogs’ issues in defending. But for all their faults, holding the Lions to a sub-100 score (just the fourth time in those eight losses they’ve done that to a quality opponent) despite an enormous 66 inside 50s, regardless of the home side’s proflicacy, regardless of the slippery conditions that made ball control difficult throughout, is a pass mark.
In reality, the Bulldogs’ issue, and Beveridge’s glaring weakness as a coach, is subtler than just being unable to defend – and even more devastating.
The truth is that they are either incapable of or unwilling to, or probably both, curb their opposition’s greatest strengths.
The Lions have two primary ways they want to control the ball: fast hands at the coalface to get the ball from inside congestion to open space rapidly, and with sharp, precise short kicking from the back half to continually move the ball forward and make use of any space offered to them.
The key to the latter isn’t necessarily the mark tally – the Lions’ 86 for the game is actually their third-lowest for the season, though it’s worth noting that one of the two lower tallies was against Adelaide in a game played in similarly slippery conditions.
The consistent issue, rather, was the Dogs consistently leaving the door ajar for Brisbane’s best ball-users to take full toll from their brilliant foot skills, with a structure that failed to protect the most important area of the ground: the corridor.
This is, indisputably, a stunning kick from Hugh McCluggage to Callum Ah Chee. Simultaneously, though, it’s a horror defensive lapse from the Dogs to allow to happen in the first place.
For starters, I’m completely confused as to why Bailey Dale and Riley Garcia, standing in the centre square on the far left of the frame as McCluggage kicks, are so close both to one another and to the Lions’ No.6. Both are free, ostensibly guarding space, but are within five metres of one another and on the Bulldogs’ side of the centre circle. Unless McCluggage’s kick is an all time shocker right to them, they are both in total no-man’s land.
Ditto Lachlan Bramble, standing as the spare in the middle of the wing only 40 metres or so from where McCluggage is standing with ball in hand. Even if the Lion is forced to go long, he’s again going to be in no-man’s land watching the footy sail over his head, eliminating his usefulness as the loose man behind the ball.
Not quite as culpable is Liam Jones: part of the reason he was dropped in the first place was his tendency to be drawn to marking contests he is unable to influence and then leave the Bulldogs ripe to be overlapped through the man he left in order to make the attempt.
There had already been a glaring example in the second quarter where Jones made a desperate run to try and spoil a Jarrod Berry mark on the wing, was two metres short, over-committed in the attempt and allowed Berry free passage to run the ball to the edge of 50 and pass to the free man left behind, Logan Morris.
He didn’t need to abandon his post here: Lachie McNeil, who as the camera switches from behind the goals to side-on, is running right beside Ah Chee as he takes the mark. In Collingwood’s system, it’s his equivalent who would man the mark here, allowing Jones to remain behind the play as the extra spare.
The result is a Lions goal, but while Jarrod Berry gets the chocolates, there were a thousand ways they could have scored it in alternate universes: Kai Lohmann, for instance, was 30 metres goalside of his opponent throughout the play, and either Ah Chee or Berry could have easily chipped the ball over the top for a walk-in goal of the type Brisbane managed consistently on Friday night.
The only possible explanation I have for this set-up is that Beveridge backs his team to somehow force the turnover from one of those kicks, as if they were trying to bait the Lions into biting off more than they can chew and then capitalising with extra numbers ahead of the ball. Had Ah Chee spilled the mark, for instance, Dale and Garcia suddenly go from being useless to a very dangerous position indeed.
If so, it’s symbolic of the Bulldogs’ problem this year. Good teams don’t let you in with mistakes like that. Bad teams do, a lot. There’s no chance, for instance, anyone in Essendon colours next week is pulling off a corridor kick like McCluggage’s.
Of greater frustration is that was the second time for the night the Bulldogs were ripped open down the belly by a brilliant Brisbane inboard kick.
The first? Dayne Zorko, in the first quarter.
Again, the Dogs’ positioning gears towards all-out attack, even without the ball, even against the most dangerous rebounding team in footy – the third-best scoring team from defensive half, to be specific.
To begin with, there are three Bulldogs – Sam Darcy, Aaron Naughton and Rhylee West – standing free goalside of Zorko as he kicks. Like with Dale and Garcia two quarters later, Naughton and Darcy are literally two metres away from one another, in utter no-man’s land.
Unseen in the vision is that their opponents have spread deep into defence and out to the wing – the Lions from this point are perfectly capable of doing what they managed with ease throughout the night, and spreading from one side of the Gabba to the other and exposing the Dogs’ glaring inability to defend space on even the slowest of transitions.
If Zorko’s kick is turned over, if it doesn’t just creep over Bontempelli’s outstretched lunge, then suddenly all three are in very dangerous positions indeed. And again, that’s a risk that pays off more often than not against the weaker teams.
Against Brisbane, it’s a fool’s game. And as Cameron kicks the goal, the Dogs’ lack of a spare behind the ball is again glaring – it forces Jason Johannisen to choose between keeping on Cam Rayner and trying to impact the No.23’s kick. He chooses the latter, but too late.
It’s sort of cherry-picking to highlight those two examples, but they’re reflective of just how easily quality opposition can pierce the Bulldogs’ defensive structure at the earliest opportunity.
For the most part, it wasn’t quite that easy for the Lions on Friday night: but throughout it all, their ability to find space for marks, spread the field, and force the Bulldogs to defend one-on-ones inside their defensive 50 was the difference in the game.
What caused the margin to finish as tight as it did was more the Lions’ own dominance allowing the Bulldogs to patch things up rather than anything substantial defensively from the visitors: so completely did they control territory in the third quarter, with 26 inside 50s to eight, that the Dogs were in effect reduced to having three-quarters of the team holding on for grim death inside defensive 50, which, combined with the slipperiness of the ground and the Sherrin, meant the space the Lions had ruthlessly exposed at every opportunity in the first half disappeared.
That, at least, is my explanation for the repeat scrappy kicks inside 50 landing in Bulldogs hands and letting them out of jail. Some woeful kicking for goal from set shots caused it just as much – again, something else left in the lap of the gods that Beveridge is lucky didn’t kill the contest by three quarter time.
Very little of these issues are the result of talent. And while Beveridge was adamant in his post-game press conference he was reluctant to risk sabotaging a strength to try and fix a weakness, the data suggests he’s missing the point.
The Lions were +34 in scores from turnovers on Friday night, off the back of Adelaide scoring 11 goals from them last week. The Bulldogs, meanwhile, remain the league’s most dominant force at scoring from stoppages.
It’s entirely possible to go all guns blazing from clearances, trust that strength to put on a winning score, and then retreat in far greater numbers and far deeper when it’s their opposition’s turn to win the footy, particularly from their defensive half.
The Dogs’ purpose as soon as the opposition wins the ball shouldn’t be to try and win it back off them, with the team they have at their disposal: it should be to do everything in their power and then some to force a stoppage. Be it a boundary throw-in or a ball-up, either will do.
It’s this failure that is slowly but surely killing the Bulldogs’ season. With five games to go, two of them against finals contenders in Fremantle and GWS, it might have left them needing nothing short of perfection to reach September – where they’ll once again be facing teams with the weapons and the wherewithal to instantly bounce them out of contention once again.
