Akum

He could certainly crash packs & clear a path. Thinks clearly in a crisis too. Would have to get the "magic potion" checked with ASADA though.

Hamish Hartless???

So Connors is WHE's manager?

This is the right way to do it. We've been given the source of the rumour so can draw our own conclusions. It's the posters who just post the bolded bit and nothing else that can GAGF.

Wow, outstanding article! Outstanding because the parallels between Macca/Bevo & Roos/Goody are all too plain to see.

It's not the superiority of the Dogs' list that got them the flag. It's that they just play for each other and for their coach far far better than anyone else. Their fairly simple game plan more or less forces them to trust each other and to back each other up. They spanked four teams that probably have better midfields if you line them up man-against-man, but the Dogs midfielders just work together better as a midfield. To a far greater degree than any premiership team I can remember, their whole is greater than the sum of their parts. And that's why they won. That's what team sport should be all about, and I couldn't be happier for them. No reason we can't do the same next season with a full-version of Goody's "run-and-gun" game plan, as long as we trust each other & back each other up. Oh, and when we get into our next Grand Final, especially if it's against an interstate club, we can expect just as much support as the Doggies got.

I think the ruck spells helped by bringing him into the game. He rarely jumped high for the hitout (which is where most of the serious leg injuries happen), trying to just use his body and brains and provide a contest. He even managed to win a few clearances. Oh, and there's no doubt he benefitted from better ball movement into the forward line, and he seems to have developed a really good understanding with Hogan.

Oh yeah, the Dogs got the double - AFL & VFL. Seems to have escaped notice in all the excitement of today. How long has it been that one club has got the firsts / reserves premiership double?

Fair enough. Just that you picked possibly the most inappropriate player in AFL history to be the target for your Trump rant thing.

Agree, they had heaps of passengers. Didn't think much of Mills, though he & McVeigh probably weren't fully fit, which makes their selection (& probably leaving out Aliir) a huge blunder. Mitchell got a heap of ball, but barely registered on hurt factor. Another huge disappointment was Luke Parker - seems perhaps he's got a lot of mileage out of being the 3rd or 4th mid, when oppositions concentrate on Kennedy & Hannebery. However, when the opposition has 4 mids that are better than you, your shortcomings really get shown up, and they did today. What gets me about the Dogs is they seem to make heaps of disposal mistakes - so often kicking & handballing to the wrong places - but when they do, they just try three times harder to win back the ball. If they handball to someone under pressure, they just scrap harder to keep possession & not give away a free. If they turn it over, their pressure is more relentless than if they'd hit their target. And they use the long bomb very differently too. Rather than looking to a big pack mark, they aim to get the ball into a dangerous position and just get it to ground and let their crumbers do the rest. By kicking the ball high and giving it lots of "hang time", their midfielders get lots of time to run towards the drop of the ball.

Totally agree with this. They are so deeply embedded in the western suburbs community.

Wow!!!!

Don't you mean from 29 to 36?

This type of player is always inconsistent, with very few exceptions. They all go through a run of games when they don't do much and can't get near it, but they'll also have some great games where they seem to have the ball on a string and bob up everywhere.

Is it worth pointing out that none of these indigenous players have ended their careers at the Cats? They've all left for other clubs. Maybe they don't feel quite at home there. Or maybe it just reflects the "fringe" quality of these players.

Yep, this absolutely nails it. Applies to Dunn & Garland too. They all play in the way that they used to as recently as 2014, but we've completely restructured the defence according to the above. We saw a great example of it in the 3rd Q VFL GF, where these three won the ball in defence OK but were unable to do anything with it to relieve the pressure, either for tempo footy or to break out of the forward press by running it out or by precise disposal.

Fair enough, but there's a difference between mids who underachieved with another team before coming to us, and then in their 4th year have still underachieved with us (Newton, Michie & probably BenKen) and mids that we drafted who hasn't achieved much yet (ANB, perhaps JKH), especially if they've been injured. Surely the former are ahead of the latter in the queue to be traded or delisted?

The only rider to that is that we need to continue our improvement over the next 18 months as much as the Dogs have over the past 18 months. The last time we've been about this far (2010) we couldn't take it any further and dropped off a cliff. It's still all in front of us.

An atypical game for ANB. He was excellent in the Qual final when we smashed them by 12 goals, and the Dogs picked him out as the one to be paid special attention. And they picked right - once they stopped him, we found it really difficult to move the ball forward and get any flow going, despite Clarrie's great clearance game. He was wearing Jed Adcock like an extra shirt for much of the game. Who tags anybody in the VFL?? He's prob never been tagged in his life before. The Dogs realised far better than we did how much the Scorps' running game - which carved them up in the Qual final - and that he was the key to it, and they did a brilliant job of stopping him.

Your opinion, I assume.

While I agree with this, Bartel is a great example of a player who doesn't have any special tricks, but just does everything right just about every time. He's especially good at the uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, that JT at his best also shares.

Yeah you're probably right. I'm coming round to thinking that maybe MFC need to lend them some crucial resources, especially match-day resources, if Casey go deep into finals again. I'm just really struck by the amount of resources (especially planning & preparation & strategy - all match-day resources) that the Dogs, having won this premiership in 2014 and knowing of the impact that premiership had on their whole club, put into this match. Remember that they had smashed the third-best club in the comp by 20 goals, while we only lost by 5, so we're not far off it. Remember too that we smashed them by nearly 12 goals just two weeks ago. I really get the feeling that after that loss, the leadership of the whole "Western Bulldogs" entity got together and decided to do something about it. I remember it being mentioned somewhere that it was only when the AFL season ended that the MFC players and the Casey players had the chance to train together. Of course, the Dogs players would have trained together all season. So maybe, given that making the alignment closer has had a great result this year, I'm really arguing for making the alignment even closer next year, just in 2 or 3 critical areas.

Yeah I agree with this too, especially the bolded bit. On the other hand, look at it this way. There was a telling shot in the 3rd Q of Plappy sitting in the coaches box all by himself, while Ash Hansen had 2 or 3 others. Their change in strategy is what opened us up in the 3rd Q, when they stopped bombing it in so much and started doing what we did to them in the qualifying final - moved the ball around the 50m arc until they found an opening. The one person who could have helped Plapp at that stage was Craig Jennings (MFC match-day strategist), but as an employee of MFC, he wouldn't have been working. While whoever replaced him at the Dogs would have been working his guts out and probably won Footscray a premiership. Scorps were ahead at half time and outscored them in the last Q, even though they looked better than us the whole of that time, so the Scorps actually did a lot right. It was probably only that change in strategy in one quarter that won Footscray the premiership. Agree that it's foolish to make the change now, when this is the first year it's worked really well. And as I said, there are sound reasons for maintaining the Casey connection. So maybe it just needs a bit of tweaking, especially at the business end of the season. Let's face it, this is also the first year for ages that the Scorps have actually won a final, let alone played off for the big prize.

No the decision to re-sign him is based on the fact that if he can get anywhere near full fitness, he has a big big upside and is capable of seriously improving our midfield, as he did in his first two years. The doubt is not in his innate ability, it's in whether he can get near to full fitness or not. That can only be judged after he has a full preseason - if that makes no difference to him, if he's no better this time next year than now, then yes, he's gone. But it's foolish and premature at this stage to delist him on the basis that this is as good as he's going to get.

Nobody except for Clarrie was breaking tackles yesterday. The problem was that nobody was running to receive a handball, and when they were (esp first half), the handball missed them and it caused a turnover. When that happens a few times, everybody stops running. I was surprised watching Swans vs Geelong how slow Heeney is in a footrace. Doesn't do his game a lot of harm though.