Every Word Ameet Bains Said on Luke Beveridge, Marcus Bontempelli, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan & 100th Anniversary Celebrations

With radio station 1116SEN celebrating Western Bulldogs Membership Day, some of the club's biggest names have been promoting the red white and blue ahead of Saturday's Round 1 clash against North Melbourne,

After hearing from captain Marcus Bontempelli earlier in the day, club CEO Ameet Bains joined Gerard Whateley on SEN's Whateley program:

Gerard Whateley: We’ve heard from Marcus Bontempelli the captain already with Garry and Tim. He’s the Chief Executive of the Western Bulldogs Ameet Bains, Ameet welcome back to the program

Ameet Bains: Morning Gerard, thanks for having me.

GW: What did you think of Opening Round? We’ve been pondering whether there’s a place for a bit of footy in Melbourne across the Labour Day weekend.

AB: Well I think it was exciting to have football back. We haven’t played in one in each of the two years, we’ve been looking on and yeah we’re really desperate to get the season started. So I understand the rationale and the importance of growing the game in the northern states, but it would be great for more teams to be involved.

GW: Is there a way to do both? Is there a way to give the northern markets the showpiece games and then come in off the back of it? Particularly here in Melbourne on the Sunday night or the Public Holiday Monday?

AB: Yeah, I think that that is absolutely an option. I think everyone agrees with the underlying rationale and that the success of broadcast and attendance over thee two years in those northern states has been warranted. But yeah, I think there’s a balance where more teams should be involved as everyone’s itching for the footy to come back and be played which is a great thing.

GW: You are embarking on a season that marks 100 years for the Western Bulldogs in the competition. How important is that for you?

AB: Yeah look, it’s such an exciting year for our football club. As you say celebrating 100 years of V/AFL competition. It provides a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect on our great history as a club and it’s a privilege for our players and staff to be part of that and to really pay tribute and homage to those who have gone before us.

GW: When you do reflect, where does your mind go? Sometimes it’s been a struggle, it’s had its moments of success, where does your mind go when you think back on the history of the Dogs?

AB: Yeah it’s probably a collection of all of those things. Clearly, some of the more recent success and Premierships in AFL and AFLW have been outstanding. But it’s probably some of those inflection moments in the club’s history where it could’ve gone the other way, and we’re fortunate to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Fightback in 1989 and the amazing work that was done by so many to keep the club going, the likes of Peter Gordon and others, yeah you look at that if had it gone a different way we wouldn’t be here right now. So moments like that are really important in the history of club’s as well.

GW: The biggest current issue for the Dogs as you enter the season is the coach's contract which Luke Beveridge spoke about in yesterday’s The Age. What has been the club’s attitude towards sending the coach in the final year of his contract?

AB: Yeah I think the most important thing to note is that he is contracted for the entire 2025 season, so there’s a lot of time for that to run and the season is obviously only in it's infancy with the club not even having played its Round 1 game. Luke is our most successful ever coach, we know how good a coach he is and we hope he coaches the club beyond 2025. I think that the practical reality is that he’s in a great space, he’s returned to pre-season with the same passion and professionalism that he’s always brought and he spoke of that obviously in that article that you reference, and discussions are open and ongoing between the club and Luke. We’re meeting regularly. Btu right now, our entire collective focus is on the season ahead and how we support Luke and the football program to be at their best.

GW: Would he have preferred the security of an additional year?

AB: I think he’s obviously, without speaking on his behalf, to reference how he answers that question with Pete Ryan as well. It’s a conversation that we’ve been having over the past few months both Kylie-Watson-Wheeler as President, Luke Darcy as a director on the board with the football portfolio alongside myself have been meeting with Luke and having those discussions as well. I think right now we’re all aligned and at this point in the season just focused on the Round 1 game against a tough opponent in North (Melbourne).

GW: Is there a risk in that strategy, Ameet? Given that last year you did have that security and when the walls closed in you were able to ride that out to get to the good stuff by virtue of the security of contract?

AB: Look, there are a lot of things to be taken from last year. I think that last year also showed probably post the Round 5 loss or the Round 8 loss that the contract tenure didn’t afford us any protection in some respects given some of the media scrutiny and what was being leveled at the club and Luke as a coach. I think in practice what really held it together was the collective nerve and focus on knowing that we have a really good coach, we have a really good playing list and that if we stuck at it things would turn, and that would be the same this year, I think. The contract is for the entire season, I think performance across the year can oscillate greatly. There was a great clip even at the Season Launch last week the great inner sanctum video that was created about the Brisbane Lions winning the Premiership and there were two bits of commentary at around Round 8 or Round 10 that both wrote Brisbane off at that point of the season, which just highlights it’s very hard to judge these things early in the season. So, the contract is there for the entire year. We’re collectively talking regularly. Luke’s in a great space and focus turns to on-field in Round 1.

GW: So what does success look like for the Dogs in 2025, Ameet?

AB: I think it’s continued improvement for us. As our club always states, we go into the year with the ambition of being the best we can be. (It) remains to be seen where we will sit ultimately, given the competition’s extremely tight and we saw that again just in the weekend’s games. Consistency remains our major focus for 2025. I think we’re really buoyed by the second half of the season last year and we obviously had some incredibly strong performances against sides that ran deep into the finals, but we also had several games where our performance wasn’t up to standard. So for us it’s really that want to play finals, search for improvement and build on what we’ve done in the previous few years.

GW: There was a seven-week stretch where you just about looked like the best team in it. Are you holding to that as the possibility of where you can be?

AB: Yeah, absolutely. I think the players themselves took a lot out of that period. We played at a couple of venues that haven’t been the happiest of hunting grounds, Geelong in Geelong as a good example and even the win against Sydney in Sydney where we were able to put in some really great four-quarter performances. So definitely those performances were drawn on, as were some of the losses, and the want to improve on those. But there’s a confidence to the playing group, to the coaching group, and we’re really excited to get the season started this weekend.

GW: Is it a heightened start to the season both through the un-availabilities early - and the captain in particular - and it’s a tough draw through the stretch. Is there a heightened sense of awareness around it?

AB: Yeah, I think there is generally, and again, I don’t want to keep referring to the weekend’s games with only two games to watch you naturally focus on them a bit more. But within those games you can see a couple of quality teams were beaten by other quality teams, so I think it’s going to be another season of intrigue. For us, the injuries do present a different challenge, but again the performance against the Hawks, albeit a practice match was encouraging in parts. We know it’s a tough competition, it’s very even, we’ve got some challenging fixtures and as you know playing some of the teams that went deep into finals last year but also a great opportunity for our players to get started and measure themselves against some of the best teams.

GW: We heard Marcus Bontempelli with Garry and Tim a little earlier on. The way he answers his contract question is to…it feels a bit unnerving from the outside. So, I can’t see a world in which Marcus Bontempelli leaves the Bulldogs, but if you just listen to him at face value, there is that world. What…how do you deal with a rather, well it feels like a unique scenario if I’m just dead honest.

AB: Yeah, absolutely. I think to answer the contract question first we’re extremely confident in Marcus remaining at the club and finishing his career as not only a one-club player but one of the very, very best to pull on the red, white and blue. (List Manager) Sam Power in particular has had a number of conversations with (player manager) Tom Pretoro who not only manages Marcus, but Sam Darcy, Ed Richards, some of our better players, and nothing at all suggests that he’s unhappy or likely to look around. I think what you find with Marcus, the way he answered all the questions this morning, I listened intently, he’s a very deep thinker. He’s a very considered person and what it comes to his contract history shows he’s done it in his own time, and mostly that’s pushed into the season. One of the great things about him as a leader and as a footballer is when it gets to the pointy end of pre-season his focus shifts entirely to on-field and being the best player and leader he can be and he generally puts most other things to the side at that point in time. So it might be a bit more of a unique approach compared to others but yeah, we’re really confident he remains and we remain fortunate that we have a player of his stature and a leader of his capability at the helm of our team.

GW: Is it fair to say that you would do that contract on any day that he knocked on the door and was ready to do it?

AB: Absolutely. Absolutely. In going back to one of your earlier questions in celebrating the 100th anniversary of V/AFL competitions there’s be a lot of moments to reflex ton the best players in our history during that time, and clearly he’s going to feature very prominently.

GW: Where does your improvement come from across the course of the season, Ameet?

AB: I think there’s probably two or three specific angles. I think one is looking at experienced players who haven't necessarily played a lot of footy in their existing roles. I think Rory Lobb’s the obvious one that comes to mind. He’s had another great pre-season playing defensively and has a lot more confidence. I think the pre-season’s also shown that we should expect some more growth in the younger players who have tasted that senior footy. Sam Darcy again is the obvious but players like Ryley Sanders, Joel Freijah, Harvey Gallagher, and then you’re always hoping for a spike from the players that are new to the club as well. Matt Kennedy from Carlton has already made a great impression not only with his football but as a person, culturally. And then obviously some of the young draftees. It was great to see Sam Davidson played well the other week, such a great story that has again been written about. A medical student, lifelong Bulldogs fan, and now a budding AFL footballer, so I think there’s a few different angles but you obviously want your best players to continue performing at the level that they can and to rediscover year-on-year the form that they’ve showed.

GW: The story you’ve had right across the summer has surrounded Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and we’ve had interviews on this program so I don’t propose just to go over everything again. I was just curious, how do you balance one player taking up so much energy and resource in the collective?

AB: Yeah, look it is a challenge, what Jamarra’s been going through, and as you say, the challenges are well-documented and probably more so in recent times, albeit with perhaps and element of over-exaggeration in terms of social media, some baseless and egregious rumours. But from our perspective our main objective remains supportive and getting him back to fitness on and off the field and football clubs are really good at doing that and continuing to assist the player in question. It obviously does take a body of resources to support that player compared to I suppose anyone else who isn’t suffering from that depth of personal issue, but footy clubs are set up and designed to do that in a way that is getting better year upon year. The metal health and well-being of our players is critical and I think the sophistication of the way in which clubs have done that now has evolved over the last decade has been extraordinary, really. So clubs are geared up to do that and in Jmarra’s case there’s a real suite of providers that are assisting him outside of the club as well, which is important to get him back to full fitness and hopefully playing a role at some point out on the field.

GW: So this has felt like from the outside sort of the key intervention. No shortcuts, no easy way backs, this is the one you’ll ride the whole way through to get Jamarra to the place where he needs to be and you need him to be to be a professional footballer. Is that a fair interpretation?

AB: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we’ve seen some positivity since the Indigenous All-Stars camp with far more consistent attendance at the club and a willingness to be part of that, which from a mental standpoint is quite significant. But there’s a long road to go and there’s probably two aspects of that. There’s the football and conditioning perspective with the reality being that he hasn’t completed the pre-season with the group. So there’s a lot of work to be done to get him physically right to play. But also in having that absence, some of that challenge, there’s clearly a level of connection and readiness from a coaching and player perspective that needs to be overcome before he can get out there, so our focus as a football club is continuing to support him both on a personal-professional level, and to get him back as soon as we can, and I think as the club’s said a number of times there’s no set timeline for that return and we’ll continue to work on building back into the club and the challenges of training as much as he can.

GW: The season starts with the two home games. The first Saturday night at Marvel and then the showpiece Friday night at the MCG against Collingwood. How big are you hoping the Round 2 occasion might be?

AB: Yeah we’re super excited. Obviously as you said we kick it off first of all Saturday night against the Kangaroos. We haven’t had a home Round 1 game for number of years, so that’s a marvellous opportunity for our fans to come along Saturday night at Marvel Stadium, and then  obviously Round 2 will be our feature game for the year in celebrating our 100th anniversary of coming into the competition, and what we’re really targeting is our largest home-and-away crowd ever. So that’s particularly exciting. The current forecast of a tick over 70,000 people would do that, but we’re hoping that we do get more, and it will be a wonderful occasion. There’s a lot to celebrate, there’ll be a lot that will happen pre-game and in and around the game and leading into the game, and we hopefully get a contest and a match against a great opponent in Collingwood.

GW: It’s a big night for a historic celebration. Ameet great to have you with us as the season commences. The very best of luck for it.

AB: Thanks Gerard.