Trade Period: The 5 Issues The Bulldogs Need To Address

We’re now 36 hours into the Trade Period for 2022, and we’re already starting to see the first few deals go through, with supporters already beginning to salivate over the newest additions to their side, speculating over what they can bring to the table over the next 12 months, or whether in fact, they can even become the player that takes their club to the promised land in 2023.

At the time of publication, the Western Bulldogs are yet to be involved in any player movements. Still, given the headlines they have made over high-profile players both coming in and going out over the past few weeks, it will only be a matter of time until the Bulldogs do get the ball rolling, with some deals expected to be wrapped up quickly, while others will go right to the final hours of the Trade Period.

Even though Trade Period lasts barely a week-and-a-half, it’s still a crucial window for all 18 clubs, as it is one of the few brief windows available all year where a club can bolster the strength of its list and address its weaknesses. At The Salty Bulldog, we’ve run the rule over some of the more glaring deficiencies that plagued the club throughout Season 2022, and identified five on-field aspects that the Bulldogs need to address during the Trade Period.

1. Key Defensive Setup

It’s one thing to say that the Bulldogs need a key defender. It’s a sentiment that has been echoed by fans and experts alike for much of the last 24 months, but personally, I think the defensive issues run a bit deeper than just needing one more tall guy down there.

The need for the key defensive stocks to be bolstered is multi-faceted. For starters, the Western Bulldogs conceded a staggering 108 goals to key forwards this season - an average of 4.6 per game. If “key forwards against the Bulldogs” was a player, it would have won the Coleman Medal by nearly 40 goals on its own. Only against Collingwood in Round 9 did the Bulldogs concede fewer than 3 goals to key forwards in any one game this year. The inability to keep tall forwards under wraps played crucial roles in narrow defeats to Carlton in Round 2 (nine goals in a 12-point loss), Geelong in Round 12 (eight goals in a 13-point loss), Fremantle in Round 21 (seven goals in a 17-point loss) and to the Dockers again in the Elimination Final (five goals in a 13-point loss).

It’s clearly an area that the Bulldogs need to devote plenty of effort to trying to rectify, and to their credit, they have got on the front foot with trying to remedy the situation, already securing Liam Jones via free agency.

Most Bulldogs fans will remember Jones the forward - a young and athletic prospect but a combination of a lack of experience, lack of support, and lack of onfield success conspired to see him largely struggle and eventually move to Carlton. There, a move to the backline saw him revive his career, managing top-10 finishes in Carlton’s best-and-fairest in five successive seasons, and transform himself into one of the most versatile defenders in the competition.

In Jones’ last season at AFL-level, Jones was involved in 110 defensive 1v1 situations (ranked 4th among key defenders in the competition) but lost just 11.8% of them - the lowest percentage out of any key defender to face 20+ 1v1s that season, demonstrating his capacity of keep opposition forwards out of the game. But equally impressive was his intercept game. In that same season, Jones also took 79 intercept marks in 19 games - ranked 4th in the league. It’s unlikely that he’s lost much of his touch either, given that he made the QAFL team of the year, despite only playing half a season.

The acquisition of Jones is a start, but he alone won’t be enough. As a lockdown defender or as an interceptor, he’ll be able to fill one of those roles, but the Bulldogs still need another defender to fill the other role. The best teams in the competition currently don’t necessarily base their game around winning the ball; rather, winning the ball back. Melbourne created a strong defensive setup with Jake Lever and Steven May in 2021, while pretty much all of Geelong’s preferred back-six can intercept the ball in their own right. If Jones is to be the lockdown defender, the Bulldogs still need a designated interceptor and vice versa.

Liam Jones will return to the Western Bulldogs a totally different player to the one that left in 2014. Source: Getty Images

2. Goalkicking Options

Granted, the Bulldogs ranked 5th in the league for points scored in 2022, but when you look at the breakdown of goalscorers throughout the year, it demonstrates that, in the end, too much was left to too few when it came to posting a winning score.

Aaron Naughton led the way with a career-high 51 goals this season, followed by Cody Weightman with 36 goals (also a career-high). After that, Marcus Bontempelli booted 24 goals, but sharing fourth spot was both Josh Dunkley and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan with just 18 goals each. For a team vying for Premierships, it’s not enough.

People will point to the fact that Josh Bruce spent most of the season on the sidelines, and could have made a big difference this year given he led the club’s goalkicking with 48 goals last year. However, the Bulldogs knew they would be without Bruce for most of this year, yet did nothing to remedy that in last year’s Trade Period. They can’t make the same mistake twice.

The Bulldogs have definitely been searching for some more options to help share the load up forward for 2023. Rory Lobb is a player that the Bulldogs have long been linked to, and has already requested a trade to the club. It’s likely that he will spend a large portion of his time in the forward line, and is coming off arguably his best season yet, booting 36 goals in a Fremantle side that reached a Semi-Final.

The query over Lobb - should a trade be facilitated - is how reliable will he be for the Bulldogs next year. For all his feats this year, it was the only season in his career that he managed more than 30 goals in a campaign, so it’s hard to be sure whether he’ll be a reliable goal scoring option for the Bulldogs. Whether he does score goals on his own is one aspect, but a by-product of having him play forward at all should be that he can draw some attention away from the likes of Naughton and Ugle-Hagan, and make scoring goals easier for them as well. But for a reported $1.5m deal over three seasons, you would be hoping Lobb can hit the scoreboard in his own right, too.

At the other end of the height scale is James Rowe, a small forward that the Bulldogs have long held an interest in, including in the 2020 Draft, but ultimately lost out to Adelaide for his services. Rowe has been linked to the Bulldogs on occasion over the past few months, but the Dogs are expected to make a play for the young Crow.

Small forwards are a commodity that the Bulldogs greatly lack, having only Cody Weightman and the uncapped Arthur Jones on their list at this stage, with Luke Beveridge and his team regularly having to turn to reinvented players, or be forced to play players out-of-position. But Rowe is an unproven talent at this stage, having kicked only 27 goals in his 36 games for Adelaide. Granted, he has been battling away in a side that has struggled largely over the past two seasons, and Rowe may benefit from a side that can provide him with more opportunities to goal, but at the very least will arrive as a largely unknown quantity.

Can Rory Lobb become a reliable goalkicking option for the Bulldogs? Source: Getty Images

3. Pressure, pressure, pressure!

Luke Beveridge-led teams defend just like that - as a team. Any goal that the Bulldogs concede is rarely the sole fault of one of the defenders; generally, the goal can be attributed to a mistake made much higher up the ground. For example, a player is out of position in the team’s defensive setup, or maybe not enough pressure is applied to the opposition ball-carrier.

When the system works, it looks fantastic. It makes it almost impossible for the opposition to play smooth transition football, and by extension, score. But when the system doesn’t work, everything falls apart, and we end up with numbers like the opposition scoring from 37% of chains starting in the defensive 50. To simplify that stat, for every 100 times that the football leaves the Bulldogs attacking 50, 37 of those will result in the opposition scoring. That’s just not sustainable for a team that wants to be challenging for Premierships.

Ultimately, the success of the team defence hinges on how well the team applies itself as a whole; unlike the previous two points, there's no one player that you can target that can fix all of the problems, but there’s no doubt the lack of pressure on the opposition needs to be addressed. We even saw how important pressure is to the Bulldogs in the Elimination Final. According to Champion Data’s complex system used to measure pressure, the Bulldogs pressure in the first half was graded as “elite” - the highest-rated category - when they kicked the first six goals of the match and had Fremantle goalless for a quarter and a half. However, when Fremantle got back into the game, the Bulldogs pressure over the last two quarters was ranked “below average” and “poor”. Clearly, the Bulldogs pressure is central to their success.

Losing Josh Dunkley hurts in this regard, given how he is one of the few players in the team renowned for the pressure he brings on a weekly basis. He’s not the only player on the list who has that knack of applying pressure, but it’s a trait that the Bulldogs definitely need to be on the lookout for if they want their current style to succeed next season.

Josh Dunkley brings plenty of heat to the contest for the Bulldogs - can they cope without him going forward? Source: Getty Images

4. The Ruck

Let’s make one thing crystal clear: Tim English is not a No.1 ruckman.

He’s a good footballer. He’s played in that role for several years. He wants to keep playing that role. He’s worked hard in that role, and he has shown some significant improvement.

This is all true. But it doesn’t make him a No.1 ruckman. It’s similar to how Bulldogs play midfielders in the forward line - just because they play as a small forward, doesn’t make them small forwards.

English spent his junior football as a midfielder, and then enjoyed a ridiculous growth spurt. The growth spurt didn’t suddenly make him a ruckman, it just made him a very, very tall midfielder. To this day, that’s exactly how he plays his football; as a tall midfielder, rather than a ruckman.

To be fair to English, his ruck work has improved slightly this year, but he still ranks well down the bottom among his peers in the competition. Among all rucks in the competition, English ranked 16th for average hitouts, 17th for average hitouts to advantage, and 32nd for hitout-win-percentage. I think he has all the tools for succeed as a No.2 ruck that spends time forward, but not to ruck on his own.

The problem is that the Bulldogs aren’t currently on the hunt for a ruckman, and the options they have in reserve don’t inspire confidence. Stefan Martin will surely retire, while Jordon Sweet has shown brief promise in his few appearances, but hasn’t been given many opportunities. Rory Lobb can ruck, but the likely outcome is that Lobb will play as that forward/ruck option when he does arrive. Brodie Grundy would be an amazing fit for the Bulldogs, and it’s a bit of a surprise that they haven’t joined Melbourne in the race for his signature.

Could Tim English do with some more help in the ruck? Source: Getty Images

5. Assistance, Please

Every strong side has a good senior coach, but they also have a strong lineup of assistant coaches. The Bulldogs coaching staff went through mass changes heading into the 2022 campaign, but they largely underwhelmed.

Like a couple of other areas of concern on this list, the Bulldogs have already started on the job of assembling a far better-equipped lineup of coaches, having secured Brendon Lade from St Kilda, but he alone isn’t the answer to every single problem in the coaching department, but it’s a start.

The Bulldogs have had some excellent assistant coaches in recent years and have subsequently had their talents picked apart, with names such as Ash Hansen, Steven King and Joel Corey all moving on. It’s no coincidence that the former two were there when the Bulldogs made the Grand Final last year, while the latter was instrumental in establishing the famous midfield trio of Bontempelli, Macrae, and Dunkley. It won’t be easy to replace the caliber of some of our better assistants in recent years, but if the Bulldogs can, it will go a long way to getting them back to competing for honours on the final day of the year.

Brendon Lade has arrived at the Bulldogs as an assistant coach - will anyone else join him? Source: Getty Images