5 Things We Learned - Round 4
The Western Bulldogs have continued their recent dominance of the Sydney Swans with a 28 point win at the Sydney Cricket Ground, squaring our season ledger at 2-2. With many sides being plagued by inconsistency it was a necessary victory to keep us in the pack.
1. A Captains Game
Despite a slow start to the season, on Thursday night the Marcus Bontempelli all Bulldog supporters have come to admire, respect and worship reminded the rest of Aussie Rules community just how good a player he is and why he is easily in the top echelon. Bontempelli’s performance against the Swans was rather special collecting was 19 quality disposals (74%), 14 contested possessions, 22 pressure acts, eight tackles, two goals, seven clearances and four intercept possessions. Collectively that makes for one hell of a
game.
The Bulldogs are a talented side for sure and there is a strong support cast of players who are very much capable of winning matches off their own boot but the man known at “The Bont” is our crown jewel. If we are to once again return to the Promised Land and achieve what many think we should, it will be off his back.
“The Bont” has played better in many other games but that shouldn’t overshadow what was a very impressive display from a top five player in the game.
The captain leading the way once again. Source: Getty Images
2. The Need for Speed is Making a Difference.
It has been quite some time since the Bulldogs possessed a large amount of leg speed in its list but no more. Over the past three off seasons there has been a bigger focus on precision and speed and drafting the likes of Bailey Smith, Ed Richards, Laitham Vandermeer and now Luis Butler certainly add further strengths that open up our contested and handball happy game style.
Vandermeer who has had a bright start to his AFL career, had 23 total sprint efforts while Richards notched up 17 total sprint efforts and ran 11.9 kilometres, the fifth highest on the ground.
Interestingly the Dogs had four of the five maximum speeds recorded on the night with Bailey Smith (32.8km), debutant Louis Butler (31.7km), Josh Bruce (31km) and Laitham Vandermeer (31km) leading the way.
Considering how much damage Collingwood’s outside run and St Kilda’s zippy small forwards caused us in rounds one and two there are now plenty of options to make them accountable.
3. Keep That Scoreboard Ticking.
67 points is now our highest score of the season but that clearly isn’t something to hang our hat on. What we can discuss is conversion and efficiency found over the past two weeks but especially last Thursday night. Set shot goal kicking has become one of our major flaws for several years and with both sides only recording an identical number of inside 50s (42) and marks in the forward 50 (13) making the most of these opportunities would be the deciding factor to achieve victory. The Dogs would convert 9 of its 14 set shots into goals compared to the Swans 4 of its 11. In an era of football where conversion in front of goal is nothing short of putrid at times and where this flaw has cost us several games it was nice to see it on the other foot for a change.
From those 13 marks inside 50, the Dogs would also register 11 scoring shots (7.4) to the Swans 10 (3.7).
Capitalising on turnovers is also more important than ever in football and for us to outscore the Swans by 40 points (58-18); considering they outscored us 20-9 from clearances, is quite impressive and it further emphasises we’ve got our pressure game back together.
After restricting the Giants to converting just 14% of their 29 inside 50s into goals last week, it was terrific effort (with a bit of luck from poor conversion) to hold the Swans to just the five goals (12%) from their 42 Inside 50s. Before Thursday night the Swans had converted 25.4% of their season 2020 inside 50 entries into goals.
Even though we aren’t winning by significant margins and the scores might not clearly display that things have turned around, the statistics say otherwise and sooner rather than later this new trend will become a constant reality.
4. That Small Forward Problem
When it comes to quick small forwards we’ve had our fair share of issues and on Thursday night it seemed that we we’re literally playing the Tom Papley Football Club as he arguably could have kicked six or more goals on the night.
To be fair to Hayden Crozier, his direct opponent on the night in Papley is one of the better small forwards currently going around and he did his best on the night but it shows that we really are missing a certain lockdown defender that adds that pure defensive edge to our back six.
Taylor Duryea was traded in from Hawthorn in the 2018 Trade Period for a 2019 fourth round pick and was perfect at filling that role for us last season and the Hawks in his 118 games. We’ve seen the likes of Charlie Cameron, Jack Lonie, Brandon Matera, Toby Greene and Luke Bruest trouble us over the past few years and now we can add Papley to the list. Duryea’s absence not only robs us of a pure defender to shut them down but the ability to allow attacking players like Crozier and Williams to focus their game on their strengths instead of adjusting to different roles. Hopefully his absence isn’t much longer and we can start putting the clamp on these pesky small forwards.
The need for a crafty small forward has become even more prevalent following the injury to Sam Lloyd. Source: Getty Images
5. Young Talent Time
It seems to that week to week we try to outdo ourselves in naming the youngest side possible in the clubs history. With no player over 150 games named, the closest being Jackson Macrae on 144, 10 players under 50 games and a further three below 10 matches it must be pretty close.
It isn’t a one off clearly as it’s something we’ve become accustomed to over the past three years having selected eight of the ten AFL teams named in any particular round without any 150 gamers.
With the average age of the 22 selected being 24.15 years, a median age of 23.96 years and an average of 71 games per player, it was an impressive display as their efforts remained at a high level throughout the game.
We’ve seen plenty of talent at the draft come through our doors over the past 10 years; none more impressive than Marcus Bontempelli and Jackson Macrae but Aaron Naughton, Caleb Daniel, Bailey Smith, Tim English, Ed Richards and Toby McLean aren’t at all too shabby.
We haven’t even touched on Rhylee West who is the perfect replacement to fill the void Clay Smith’s retirement left. For the time being West will just have to bide his time turning himself into a high calibre small forward instead of a potential midfield star like his father Scott.
Hopefully shortly in the coming rounds there will be some more mature players returning to the line up but for now the kids despite their inexperience are more than up to the task of holding the fort.