Review Dogs Lose to Demons by 28 - Rd 11, 2021

[Mutt]

Feel like the criticism of Bont by a lot of people is strange- clearly tried to lift us in the second half for mine. Cracked in really well all game and had very few teammates help him out.

Bont needs to physically impose himself in the clearances when we are down. He is the biggest player besides the ruckman at every clearance. He doesn't always use that presence.

We all respect the Bont enormously...but he is human and every once in a while has a game where he disappoints. Don't think that we don't love him and thank God he's ours. He's still the best Bulldog player I've ever seen.

 

[Oliver G]

After a pathetic first quarter this how we matched up…

Q2-Q4...

Effective Clearances
WB: 19
ME: 18

Inside 50s
WB: 50
ME: 40

Shots At Goal
WB: 13 (46%)
ME: 13 (54%)

Margin at QT: -27
Margin at FT: -28

As bad as we were for the match it was essentially lost in Q1.

We had more first possessions and effective clearances and lost the match which is extremely rare. Over 95% of teams WIN when they are in front on first possession and effective clearances.

Far, far too many turnovers. Melbourne scored 64 points from turnovers.

Not many positives tonight but Roarke is fast cementing his spot and apart from a horrid turnover late he had a very good game. English was excellent on return as was Macrae with a game-high 36 disposals, game-high 9 tackles and a game-high 6 inside 50s.

Extremely disappointed for Garcia he has been so good in the VFL and his 2 touches tonight were excellent and his attack on the ball looked good too. Butler isn’t the same type of player and it showed. Garcia can play in the centre and has been very effective in that role in the VFL. Butler played 98% of his time on the wing and actually did alright apart from a horrible set shot.

I’ve been saying it for weeks but Bailey Smith has been disappointing so this year. He may get a lot of touches but his impact hasn’t been the same as it was in 2020 and he is making far too many blatant turnovers.

We've now played 5 games at Docklands in front of no crowd and have played horrendously in 3 and one could easily argue that they have been our 3 worst performances in 2020/21.

It's going to be tough supporting over the next month, our next game in Melbourne is not scheduled until R16 (July 2-4) against North Melbourne with the next four weeks away and a bye...

R12 - Fremantle (Perth)
R13 - Bye
R14 - Geelong (Geelong)
R15 - West Coast (Perth)

I think this might be a record for a Melbourne based team. 4 weeks in a row not playing in Melbourne in a H&A season even with the bye.

Now as always here are some of the rarer stats…

Expected Score / Actual Score
WB: 60 / 59 (-1)

ME: 78 / 87 (+11)

Expected Margin / Actual Margin: 18 / 28

Centre Bounce Attendance
21 - Sweet
20 - Macrae
19 - Bontempelli, Liberatore
9 - B. Smith
7 - Lipinski
4 - English
1 - Hunter

Ruck Contests (Hitouts / To Advantage)
45 - Sweet (17 / 5)
28 - English (9 / 3)

Hitouts To Advantage

WB: 8
ME: 11

First Possessions
WB: 36
ME: 32

Clearances / Effective Clearances
WB: 36 / 27 (75%)
ME: 27 / 25 (93%)

Tackle Efficiency
WB: 60%
ME: 62%

Forward Half Kicking Efficiency
WB: 65%
ME: 62%

Defensive Half Kicking Efficiency
WB: 69%
ME: 77%

Forward Half Contested Marks
WB: 5
ME: 6

Score Launches
3 - Lipinski, B. Smith
2 - Bontempelli, Dale
1 - Crozier, Daniel, Hunter, Keath, Liberatore, R. Smith, Sweet, Weightman

Shots At Goal
WB: 18 (44%)

ME: 23 (57%)

Targets Inside 50
10 - Naughton
7 - Bruce
5 - English, Weightman
2 - Bontempelli, R. Smith
1 - Butler, Hunter, Garcia, Liberatore, Lipinski,

Defensive 50 Intercept Marks
WB: 2
ME: 7

Defensive Half Turnovers
WB: 24
ME: 25

Forward Half Turnovers
WB: 52
ME: 45

Unforced Turnovers
WB: 17
ME: 13

Unforced Turnovers By Player
4 - Dale
2 - Daniel, Liberatore, B. Smith
1 - Bontempelli, Butler, Hunter, Keath, Lipinski, Weightman, Williams

Turnovers/Frees/50M Penalties Punished By Goals
3 - Liberatore
2 - Bontempelli
1 - Cordy, English, Lipinski, Macrae, Williams

Free Kick Summary


Score Sources

 

[Mattdougie]

NOW we will see if Bailey Dale has improved. He will be “tagged” every week now so let’s see what the boy has.

 

[Zgope1]

similar game to the richmond one

dogs cant handle fast paced pressure.

pretty concerning tbh.

If we can figure out that that doesn’t really matter in the finals that’ll be just fine. We should and will have the simplest style in the comp by then. Smash them in the midfield, take lots of clunks inside 50 and lock it in when we don’t.

with Treloar and Dunks back that’ll happen. The overuse thing won’t matter so much.

best way to deal with pressure is to doll it out yourself

 

[ossie_21]

Hitouts To Advantage

WB: 8
ME: 11

Considering we were up against Gawn, this is a great effort. Sweet was gassed in the second half, but he really had a crack

 

[Triple Baileys]

Tldr: costly TOs and not strong enough in the contest. Think those things will be overcome as the year progresses

I struggle to see where Melbourne’s improvement will come from

I kind of thought that about the Dees and said similar earlier. But there is something nagging at me about that. What bothered me with my statement that they could not play any better? And then I realised what it was. They were laughing and joking before the start of the second half. They were laughing and joking in their player huddle before the last quarter. Contrast that with our grim Alamo looks.

They may have let us off easy. Was it like a cat playing with a mouse at times? They might be a 10 goal better side than us. Do we need to be more honest and say we have to make a huge improvement to get near them?

I just looked at the stats. Yeah, a couple of our stars were a bit down but still had a heap of possessions. Yeah, a few of our better players were down - Libba, Bailey Williams, e.g. But the real story is the gap between our stars and the bottom of our list. It's like that every week, really.

 

[Oliver G]

Considering we were up against Gawn, this is a great effort. Sweet was gassed in the second half, but he really had a crack

Absolutely, if Sweet could run out a game we might have had a chance.

 

[ScragCity]

NOW we will see if Bailey Dale has improved. He will be “tagged” every week now so let’s see what the boy has.

Lol Matt. Doesn't the fact that he is being tagged already tell you that he has improved as a player? Usually players don't get tagged unless they're going pretty well...

If Dale was selected for AA for the next five years you'd say "yeah but he didn't win a Brownlow so he's not the best player of all time." Let's stop shifting the goal posts and put this boring discussion point to bed once and for all. Bailey Dale has played well for half a season of footy.

 

[D Mitchell]

I hate watching games on TV, all you see is where the ball is with no idea of how it got there, more important, where it is going. That Lloyd nonsense about the wingers being confident of the ability of the insiders to win the ball and feed it out to them uncontested doesn't work against a team that brings its wingers in to apply the pressure we saw tonight and that R'mond applied. The only forward I saw on the small screen working up the ground was Naughton. I hate watching games on TV.

 

[perro_loco]

It’s amazing how many contrasting views there are on tonight’s game.

After All these years of watching footy and discussing it on here, still so many have no fu**in idea what they’re talking about.

Puzzling to say the least.

For the benefit and wisdom of us all, stay in your bucket, Charlie!!!

 

[Scary_Foot_9]

He lacked ping, he plodded a bit if that isn’t lethargic I need to get a better understanding of the word Do you honestly think he had a good game?

At this point I get the feeling we are just becoming more entrenched in our positions but I’ll try to answer your question. By his standards did he have good or high quality game? Of course not. Was he in our bottom five or ten players, abysmal or the reason we lost? Not even close.
In terms of our midfielders (the key part of our team) who played near or around their usual standard:

Hunter (at standard- very good game)
Macrae (disastrous first Q - rest pretty good close to usual standard)
Bont (Slightly below standard)
Libba (One or two standard deviations below standard)
Baz (pretty off the pace well below standard)
Lipinski (given the opportunity he had today quite disappointing)

 

[immortalmike]

The excuses I've seen from our supporters have been hilarious.
Signs have been worrying all year that we've struggled when the game isn't played on our terms. When teams outwork us and pressure the ball carriers we fall apart.

Melbourne are the better side. Pretty simple.

We look a lot like Adelaide in those years in the 2000s where they'd continually finish top 4 with a high percentage and crumble in finals. Regular season specialists.

 

[Some Idiot]

Is Stef Martin a chance next week? Fair to say Sweet was struggling a bit towards the end of the game.

 

[Dogs Rule]

Could tell from the opening five minutes we were in trouble, those first few clearances and goals were some of the easiest and softest I’ve seen. Lost it in the first, outworked, poor pressure and dumb, dumb decisions (the risky switches...enough please) and basic turnovers. Hopeless this lesson kicks us back into gear because 28 points was flattering should‘ve been double.

Have to bounce back hard next week. No excuses. Need to win back some respect.

 

[Oliver G]

Is Stef Martin a chance next week? Fair to say Sweet was struggling a bit towards the end of the game.

Yes, Bevo said he should be right.

 

[Mattdougie]

I know it’s hard for some to understand footy but it’s a simple game most of the time

Yes Bailey Dale has had a very good start to the year running off half back free to do as he wishes but the first time a team put any work onto him and made him accountable he was back to previous Bailey Dale in the forward line. The difference is playing forward he had someone on him all the time and he failed forward.

Now he will have someone to worry about locking him down as well as pushing forward so if he can’t learn to beat that and continues to play like he did tonight he hasn’t improved has he?

I’m very interested to see how he goes as he has become important to the way we play and will be a net loss to team output if he can’t beat a tag.

JJ was tagged across halfback and went from Norm Smith to VFL, so what’s Dale got?

 

[Zgope1]

I kind of thought that about the Dees and said similar earlier. But there is something nagging at me about that. What bothered me with my statement that they could not play any better? And then I realised what it was. They were laughing and joking before the start of the second half. They were laughing and joking in their player huddle before the last quarter. Contrast that with our grim Alamo looks.

They may have let us off easy. Was it like a cat playing with a mouse at times? They might be a 10 goal better side than us. Do we need to be more honest and say we have to make a huge improvement to get near them?

I just looked at the stats. Yeah, a couple of our stars were a bit down but still had a heap of possessions. Yeah, a few of our better players were down - Libba, Bailey Williams, e.g. But the real story is the gap between our stars and the bottom of our list. It's like that every week, really.

Their laughs in the huddle are because they’ve got some arrogant dudes. They’re not gonna coast to a premiership if they only have to roll with plan A. Right now it’s all clicking for them.

they didn’t have Louis Butlers, or Garcias, Mcneils or even Jordan Sweets and Cody Weightman’s out there.

they won tonight because they got the jump on us in the guts which is because we’re in flux there, they had a hot night with efficiency and we had some of those guys give very little.

it was not cat and mouse. We go into the finals with a much better start in the guts, much better forward have lock in which we’ve had all year and we make a bunch of their average AFL players kick it down the throats of our half backs.

Their defence is sublime but you need to be potent to win 3 finals. We have that potency and they don’t.

 

[Mattdougie]

The excuses I've seen from our supporters have been hilarious.
Signs have been worrying all year that we've struggled when the game isn't played on our terms. When teams outwork us and pressure the ball carriers we fall apart.

Melbourne are the better side. Pretty simple.

We look a lot like Adelaide in those years in the 2000s where they'd continually finish top 4 with a high percentage and crumble in finals. Regular season specialists.

We have both named the players that worry us when it matters and they all went missing tonight. The bigger problem was the guys we thought would stand up fell over also

 

[Dogs Rule]

The excuses I've seen from our supporters have been hilarious.
Signs have been worrying all year that we've struggled when the game isn't played on our terms. When teams outwork us and pressure the ball carriers we fall apart.

Melbourne are the better side. Pretty simple.

We look a lot like Adelaide in those years in the 2000s where they'd continually finish top 4 with a high percentage and crumble in finals. Regular season specialists.

To be fair, we were 9-1 before tonight, so worrying signs are ignored when you’re winning and flying. Not sure we were going that badly.

Finals aren’t won in May and we’re missing three critical midfield cogs in Dunkley, Treloar and Martin. Remove Gawn, Oliver and Petracca and they struggle.

 

[Zgope1]

The excuses I've seen from our supporters have been hilarious.
Signs have been worrying all year that we've struggled when the game isn't played on our terms. When teams outwork us and pressure the ball carriers we fall apart.

Melbourne are the better side. Pretty simple.

We look a lot like Adelaide in those years in the 2000s where they'd continually finish top 4 with a high percentage and crumble in finals. Regular season specialists.

As constituted theyre a more ready side.

they’re fine. In the finals their mids will lose the head start Gawn gives them, their entries become softer, they capitalise a bit less.

they have an incredible back 6 but you won’t hold back 3 elite team in a row defending from the back and our midfield fully fit will make them do it and they’ll scramble. Everything went wrong for us tonight and it was still an interesting game.

I’m not saying I disagree that they’re better, they might be, but I’ve been much more deflated from a big game loss before

 

[Proffessor]

‘Thought the defence did ok.

The midfield are the ones who need to look at themselves. Petracca and Oliver kept getting their arms free.

They only needed to get one arm free. Oliver might just have set a record for the most unpenalised one handed handballs tonight.

 

[threenewpadlocks]

I know it’s hard for some to understand footy but it’s a simple game most of the time

Yes Bailey Dale has had a very good start to the year running off half back free to do as he wishes but the first time a team put any work onto him and made him accountable he was back to previous Bailey Dale in the forward line. The difference is playing forward he had someone on him all the time and he failed forward.

Now he will have someone to worry about locking him down as well as pushing forward so if he can’t learn to beat that and continues to play like he did tonight he hasn’t improved has he?

I’m very interested to see how he goes as he has become important to the way we play and will be a net loss to team output if he can’t beat a tag.

JJ was tagged across halfback and went from Norm Smith to VFL, so what’s Dale got?

I don't think one game from Dale against 10 games of virtual All-Australian form is the gotcha that you want it to be. (and yes, the turnovers were horrendous, but he wasn't absolutely dreadful because he made up for it with hard running, some okay pure defensive stopper stuff and accumulating 20+ possessions)

 

[threenewpadlocks]

Expected score (accuracy of shots) - 18 points difference

Difference in injury outs - more than 18 points.

This doesn't necessarily mean we're the worse team when it comes to a theoretical finals matchup come September.

 

[Jdoggy]

As soon as Dunkley went down against GWS, said to myself mentally we need to bank as many wins as we can until he gets back; it's easy to forget that per player rankings after our GWS Game he was in the top 10 with Bont/Libba/Macrae and luckily that perspective helps in our 2 losses while being able to get the wins we have which makes the Port win all the more crucial. I love Adz albeit I don't rate his absence as vital as Dunks but both would have been real handy and hope they're back for our rematch.

Personally I think there's a misconception that our midfield has "depth" when the reality is, because we have arguably at least 5 A listers that create a headache for oppositions to contain, the drop off in quality when such are out injured are when we can be found out. As good a season as Libba has had he must be feeling the effects of being the sole inside bull/extractor whilst operating in our high-octane game style because Dunks is/was the perfect foil for this setup so opposition can't just sit on Lib and provides that extra rotation of a prolific serious hardball winner; Dal Santo has essentially just shared this sentiment on Fox Footy First Crack while I'm typing it.

It's no secret that our strength in midfield helps mask the real defensive deficiencies but it's become evidently clear how much our defense relies on our midfield dominance as our midsized defenders are more offensive weapons rather than defensive stalwarts who get respite when our pressure upfield is causing forward half retention; main reason why when we have that dominance our midsized defenders have a field day for thrashings but put our defense to the test, we can be made to look pretty bad. As you can tell I can't emphasize enough how much I miss Dunkley and having both him and the other half of the bromance out makes for some patient weeks of recovery.

It was good to see that for his lack of possessions, Bruce was top 5 distance covered when the Channel 7 infographic showed the Telstra Tracker during the 3rd Quarter (I think it was) at 11.5kms; can't fault him for lack of effort and gets a big thumbs up for nailing the shots he had which last year we got pretty use to him missing, happy for him and that turn around.

Credit to Melbourne though, something had to give for years of suffering and things just had to click when you manage to recruit in both Lever and May and now they have a real good lineup/structure on paper with a system thats getting the job done; although they have had games where the Melbourne of old still makes an appearance (against North/Carlton/Sydney). Not naive to say having the Bromance in the side means we win as Melbourne are proving a series outfit but the midfield battle would have been hot and truly worthy of 1st vs 2nd so they'd better be back for Round 20 and can gather better judgements/assessments from there.

*Edit: Also seeing it slip away at the start like it did from the center clearance and it's a big ask for Sweet to go up against Gawn so thank goodness we had English back in the side at all. After his first few games very optimistic Sweet can be our Number 1 ruck but it was clear he still has a way to go in general play/tank after that air swing that Gawn picked up and laced out to McDonald; tonight was a big task that he'll have to learn from but he has been promising.

 

[BrunswickDog]

Our forward line looked a bit out of sync as well with English back in.

The forwards spoiled each other a few times, which should resolve with more game time together