Pates

Great to see the bulldogs benefit from an academy player while we get shafted the very next year. It’s like the word “fair” is a swear word at the AFL.

Lol i hope this means the hawks have YEARS down the bottom end of the table!

Exactly my thoughts, everyone completely wrote off the Pies and their trip to Adelaide earlier this year. As I said in my earlier post, the club/players can look at this with “woe is us, we’re up against it” or they can say to each other “no excuses, leave it all out there and the get the win”. Fact is if we’re wanting to do more than make up the numbers in the finals than our players need to show that they aren’t the Melbourne of old and get the 4 points this week. I genuinely had thought the club, players, and even fans had shaken the Melbourne of old mentality. Sadly doesn’t look to be the case.

My guess sadly is that it will be fly up on the day, which means a stupidly early start. These sorts of situations can be seen as obstacles thrown up that suck or challenges that can galvanise the group. It’s bloody well time the players stuck their heads in and got the job done, we’ve had our slump, it sucks but move on and get the [censored]ing win. I love Max but his leadership has been found wanting in the last month, him, Jack, and the other leaders at the club need to be the ones to pull us out of this funk. You can’t expect the kids to do it. Oh and thank you @Lord Nev, you basically said everything I needed to say re: Jackson/Weid.

I think it’s because the alternative is to bring Weid in, and I think that would be seen as a backward step. We needed to drop some players though, been coasting and hoping that it will change for too long now.

Surprised that Hibbo got the chop, he’s a cool head to have back there usually. Still, good luck to Bowey! We’ve been found out in the small defender department lately so this is the young lads chance to make a place for himself in a team heading towards finals. Sparrow for Jordon is a good shout.

Glad to hear that it was all bulls***, would be nice if reporters actually reported news rather than starting rumours.

This will completely throw away any chance of Dees fans getting to see them play live in Melbourne before the start of finals. I know crowds are going to be a slow burn anyway but hardly a fan friendly decision. I totally get the reasons behind it, the club has taken a tough hit on our bank accounts but it still isn’t a great look for a club that’s pushing for premiership contention.

Why Darwin? We’ve made plenty of inroads in making Alice Springs our “home away from home”, and it’s much less draining. Not happy at all with this run home, if this is a club choice then it could well scuttle our season. Only thing that could making it work a LITTLE BIT better is if somehow our GC game gets shifted to the G or Etihad.

I think that’s it, most people cop the “bad days” with umpiring with the caveat that it swings about where one week you might get done over and the next week you’ll get a decent ride. It appears that the dogs aren’t getting that swing back and that’s where it’s a bit mystifying. Interestingly we were close to the top when we were in form though, so it definitely points that for us we are much more likely to be getting free kicks when we are at the top of our game (first to the ball, high pressure, better kicks creating marking infringements).

We wouldn’t be able to do our usual routine, the players would be away from their families and basically in quarantine. It’s also the fact of going to the draining conditions of Darwin and onto the pretty fast track and warm conditions of Perth, I could really see it having issues for us.

I’d hate us to be whiners like Scott but if we did a flyflo situation into Darwin and back that up with Perth that will completely destroy the players bodies coming to the end of the season. I hope the club is pushing for a Victorian game or at worst game on the Gold Coast.

When Kozzie lined up his tackle Richards was standing upright, when Richards saw Kozzie he ducked initiating the head clash. The head clash then meant that Kozzie couldn’t complete the tackle as normal as it turned it more into a clash of bodies. If Richards braces for that tackle with his body then he takes it in the midriff and is probably all good.

I totally agree the bias was disgraceful from the umps but the game was determined by us not taking our opportunities when they came. Overall Brown’s game was actually decent but his two early misses set the tone and meant we were chasing our tails from the point onwards. We rarely made the most of the periods where we had the territory and is it just me or do we never look like scoring from stoppages of late? The game was there for us to win, umps aside, we weren’t good enough to take it.

Love Gawny, but he goes to the same school of spin as Goody and it’s not a good look. We were clearly beaten in a lot of areas on the weekend and I would much rather hear our leader say something like, “we believe in each other, we need our fans to believe in us, but we know that what we did on the weekend and what we’ve produced lately isn’t good enough if we’re serious about challenging.” First step towards solving a problem is recognising you have one. Call a spade a spade, we’re in a slump.

Could not believe it when I heard David King suggesting Kozzie could be in trouble for that. Kozzie went the body, Richards instigated the head clash. For me all the slippery head high contact ones they get (particularly with the likes of Caleb Daniel) are part of the game, it sucks and it’s a little sneaky but so be it. It’s the fact that they get tackled and then will blatantly drop the ball without an attempt to dispose of it properly, or they throw more than you would see at a Storm game, and that the umpires seem to call those free kicks against us but not them. That’s not even mentioning the amount of times Max, TMac, May, and others got blocked from jumping at the ball and yet some how Hannan gets a free for a push in the back when he does an unrealistic attempt at a speckie. It’s the inconsistencies that anger fans.

The only thing that would make Scott happy would be all 22 H&A matches + finals in Geelong. The guy cannot help himself.

I remember that one, beggars belief that no umpire saw that at all even if the dimwit right there was too busy admiring his throw up. These are the ones that genuinely get you asking is the favouritism deliberate, it’s so blatant there can’t be any excuse.

Surely about time we get #freekickbulldogs trending. It’s out of control now.

It’s like his shoulders have a target on them for ever high flying player isn’t it? The last 4 rounds can be looked at a fight or an opportunity, we have to win hard games to finish the year which means if we do win games at the end we will have form coming into finals. Not unlike 2018, we have a tricky run home, last time we used it to springboard ourselves into a prelim. Time to stand up, are we or are we not better than 2018?

Kozzie was one of a few positives from the dogs loss, he seemed to have his bounce back and thrust for putting pressure on. Occasionally he goes a little too far (pushed in the back following a chase) but mostly it causes the opposition to worry themselves into making mistakes. He did some excellent smothers and pressure acts all night. Couldn’t believe it when I heard David King suggest he could be looked at for his tackle that resulted in the concussion of the dogs player. He went low and the dogs player ducked his head, not sure what Kozzie can possibly do in that situation.

Something that was very intelligent and cool from the bulldogs was their ability to look for the easy 15m (although at times closer to 5m) kick to be able to control and protect the ball. We talk about the return of the red mist for the Dees, it was interesting to see them execute that side of the game compared to us. The players have lost their heads in recent weeks, early in the year we were able to calm ourselves down at the right moments to protect the ball and retain possession. Now we seem to be rushing things and going for the immediate get out kick of down the line. Now if Max is waiting there and it’s a dry day/night that’s “ok”, but really we should be looking at options available that hold possession. I personally think we’ve been feeling the weight of being on top of the ladder and being “the hunted”. Dropping top spot could be a bit of a hidden positive to wake the players up a bit and reset the way we play. (Trying to find positives in falling back to the back)

Sorry if I’m being daft, is that saying that they are +79 for the year? I’m a bit confused with the “FF” & “FA” part of the column. My brother and I were discussing the biggest issue of the free’s discrepancy. It’s the fact the almost every 50/50 decision, whether it’s a prior opportunity or an incorrect disposal or a block off the ball ALMOST ALWAYS goes their way. There’s zero consistency, case in point Hannan’s first goal we got a dogs player cold for HTB/incorrect disposal but it was called play on and then in the following stoppage Brayshaw gets done for HTB with little to no prior opportunity. English’s fluke of a goal came off the bulldogs player just dropping the ball. Lever, Gawn, May, and Hibberd were blocked from contests ALL NIGHT but we barely got a sniff at it, while the bulldogs got soft ones all through the night. If there had been fans at the ground the Dees faithful would have been frothing at the mouth.

We got away with it early in the season, it’s costing us crucial points now. Problem is it’s clearly a mentality thing because Brown has always been a dead eye and now he’s missing easy ones. I’m hoping him nailing those other two (the last one was tricky as well) will give him confidence. The tricky thing is if you highlight it too much that can play up the accuracy issues, get a psychologist or a hypnotist if you want but it needs to be addressed. We miss top 4 by one game then this will be one of the main reasons why.

Top 2 was always going to be a stretch, and at one point this year we were definitely one of the top 2 teams, if not the best team. Sadly it looks like we will go down as one of those teams that peaks too early, it’s hard to control that sort of form because you just have to take advantage of it when it comes. The challenge for the FD, mainly Goody, Yze, and Williams, is to re-energise the players to capture that form back. That is going to be a super tricky thing to do because the players are nowhere near gelling to the same level they were early in the season. It seems as if we will play GC next, that is no easy task, but there can be zero doubt the we are both good enough and should win it. Rather than seeing this as a crisis the players and coaches should see this as the ultimate challenge to prove the doubters wrong. One of the few positives last night is that even though he missed some crucial kicks early, Brown looked dangerous and getting him into form could be the one of the most important things before the end of the season. Top 4 is a chance but dropping the stupid points against Adelaide, GWS, Collingwood, and Hawthorn now mean we will have to make them up elsewhere.