Autopsy Western Bulldogs 2023 season review

[Dogs Rule]

Name another player on the list who will stay back and run sprints after a game because they played poorly? I guarantee you Baz cares more about his performance than anyone here does.

He had a s*t year, have a crack at his skills or ability if you want but anyone who sprouts the party boy/social media obsessed/doesn’t care bullshit is a ****** flog to be honest the guy loves the club and his teammates and works his ass off

Smith and/or the entire list can do as many post match sprints as they like, but they're useless if we lose the game. Smith and every other player on the list are paid to perform on field, during actual matches and this year (apart from a few exceptions) they failed. Dismally.

If our players, including Smith (and many others), care about their performance as you say, they would work on improving their skills and decision making and not repeating the same basic errors time and time and time again. That's what we've seen this year.

We've seen games where it appears as though we've turned up the toes, put up the white flag and meekly conceded defeat. That's not what we pay our memberships for, that's not what the club was built on.

Coaches of the past would kill for some of the talent on our list, yet this year we've again p****** it down the drain.

The Senior Coach and his assistants take some blame, but the playing list should be right on the hook as well. They need a massive wake up call, a giant rocket up their a**** to shake them into action...and fast.

 

[theAthenian]

is there any chance of rocket eade joining the coaching staff in some capacity simply for the spray?

 

[Hobdog]

Busslinger is still a way off physically. He would have been brutally exposed in our AFL defence.

Can’t argue with that but hasn’t generally stopped Bevo debuting blokes before!


Sent from my iPhone using BigFooty.com

 

[Del165892]

Pretty good season overall. We won more games than we lost. Won a couple on the road. Beat Freo in Perth. Beat the Cats in Geelong. Good development year from Marra.

 

[Next Waiting]

Smith and/or the entire list can do as many post match sprints as they like, but they're useless if we lose the game. Smith and every other player on the list are paid to perform on field, during actual matches and this year (apart from a few exceptions) they failed. Dismally.

If our players, including Smith (and many others), care about their performance as you say, they would work on improving their skills and decision making and not repeating the same basic errors time and time and time again. That's what we've seen this year.

We've seen games where it appears as though we've turned up the toes, put up the white flag and meekly conceded defeat. That's not what we pay our memberships for, that's not what the club was built on.

Coaches of the past would kill for some of the talent on our list, yet this year we've again p****** it down the drain.

The Senior Coach and his assistants take some blame, but the playing list should be right on the hook as well. They need a massive wake up call, a giant rocket up their a**** to shake them into action...and fast.

Talent is a word that gets bandied about a lot. But it inevitably isn't enough on its own in this game. Like the old genius equation. 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

A lot of the commentary around our losses was the players weren't playing for the coach. Looked to me like some of them weren't playing for their team mates/each other. That's my first criteria for trading, delisting ... generally getting rid of. Can't trust 'em, can't have 'em....regardless of talent.

 

[Dogs Rule]

Talent is a word that gets bandied about a lot. But it inevitably isn't enough on its own in this game. Like the old genius equation. 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.

A lot of the commentary around our losses was the players weren't playing for the coach. Looked to me like some of them weren't playing for their team mates/each other. That's my first criteria for trading, delisting ... generally getting rid of. Can't trust 'em, can't have 'em....regardless of talent.

Couldn't agree more. Look at our team from 1997 to 99. Blue collar, hard working, reliable. You knew that nothing was left out on the ground. Can't say that this year.

Two very rare sights this year - Bont visibly and demonstrably p***** off after at least two losses. Never seen him so angry as though he wanted to wash his hands of the team and that summed it up for me. That's the true feeling and if the hierarchy including Luke Darcy don't understand that and act then God help us.

 

[Dogs_r_barking]

Name another player on the list who will stay back and run sprints after a game because they played poorly? I guarantee you Baz cares more about his performance than anyone here does.

He had a s*t year, have a crack at his skills or ability if you want but anyone who sprouts the party boy/social media obsessed/doesn’t care bullshit is a ****** flog to be honest the guy loves the club and his teammates and works his ass off

Probably didn’t help having a bunch of grown men abusing him and his team mates a few weeks ago.

 

[Libba39]

Not a great year by anyone's measure.

After round 2 we looked like a bottom four side, so my optimistic view was that it was actually an improvement on that.

Unlike many on here I don't really rate our list. Our top players who win their position most weeks are Bont, Libba, Naughton, Richards and L.Jones. Treloar is just behind them.

Weightman, Dale, English, and Bailey Smith

3

Bailey Smith

Age

25

Ht

185cm

Wt

86kg

Pos.

M/F

Career

Season

Last 5

D

18.3

5star

K

8.5

3star

HB

9.8

5star

M

2.3

2star

T

3.8

5star

CL

2.7

4star

D

19.8

5star

K

9.6

4star

HB

10.2

5star

M

1.8

2star

T

3.2

4star

CL

3.2

4star

D

14.8

4star

K

7.6

3star

HB

7.2

5star

M

2.0

3star

T

3.4

5star

CL

1.6

4star

are currently overrated. The rot generally starts here.

Macrae - got a feeling he's been carrying a groin or something all year.

Highlights -
O'donnell looks good, might play 150-200 games.
Love watching Artie play and still think he can make it.
Poulter and Baker both show promise for freebies

 

[grassman75]

I’m expecting quite a drop in membership 2024 after the rubbish we produced this year. Unwatchable. Some players looked like they didn’t want to be there. We looked soft. Bevo looked defeated and not well.

Combined with the cost of rent, fuel…..well f’ing everything I think we will drop 5000 members at least (unless the membership team work out a better way of fleecing our cash without notifying us).

It all went downhill with no games in QLD. Quickly lost interest in getting beaten on Friday nights and ruining the weekend

 

[Freezin]

More troughs than peaks unfortunately. Peaked in that 9 goal opening term v Richmond and troughed well n truly v WCE.

Where to from here under the current SMT is the million dollar question.

 

[Libbaaaa]

Name another player on the list who will stay back and run sprints after a game because they played poorly? I guarantee you Baz cares more about his performance than anyone here does.

He had a s*t year, have a crack at his skills or ability if you want but anyone who sprouts the party boy/social media obsessed/doesn’t care bullshit is a ****** flog to be honest the guy loves the club and his teammates and works his ass off

A lot of that is a staged social media event, zero reason to do sprints after you have played 80% of an AFL game. Go into the gym and do a lift, cool down whatever but do it behind closed doors. Or go for a run tomorrow morning when 50 cameras aren’t pointed at you.

 

[Charlie Bucket]

A lot of that is a staged social media event, zero reason to do sprints after you have played 80% of an AFL game. Go into the gym and do a lift, cool down whatever but do it behind closed doors. Or go for a run tomorrow morning when 50 cameras aren’t pointed at you.

Good point.

Baz’s current Insta story…



It’s hard to cop that he’s going the extra yards off the footy field when he’s spent the last 6mths not putting in 100% on it.

 

[jdz101]

I'll take a Matthew Boyd/Tom Liberatore type over Smith every day.

Roll up the sleeves, hands dirty types is what we need, not image, social media obsessed party boys more concerned with how they look than how they play.

Nah.

Losing him would be a disaster.

 

[doggies ftw]

A lot of that is a staged social media event, zero reason to do sprints after you have played 80% of an AFL game. Go into the gym and do a lift, cool down whatever but do it behind closed doors. Or go for a run tomorrow morning when 50 cameras aren’t pointed at you.

It’s literally not he’s been doing it for years but ok

 

[Dogs Rule]

It’s literally not he’s been doing it for years but ok

Well, maybe time to fully concentrate on the reason he gets paid by our club and that needs to apply to the entire
list. Get serious and cut out all the bull****

 

[Libbaaaa]

Not going to quote everyone but I stand by the after game sprints stuff being absolutely unnecessary when you haven't come on as the sub. I'm also not going to pat a professional athlete on the back for putting in 'extra' work, especially when they are the ones pumping up their own tyres.

 

[dogwatch]

A Cowboy (CB for short) rides into town, ties up his horse and kicks open the doors of the BF saloon. The music stops and the place goes quiet.

CB stares around the room and thunders "If I hear anybody say anything - ANYTHING - about Bevo, Timmy or Baz ... [reduces voice to a whisper] ... there's gonna be trouble ... "

The bar slowly empties.

 

[flipper83]

Some will say it was the losses against the bottom 4, others will blame Bevo's coaching.

But we all know deep down that your fate was decided in October last year.

No Cordy No Bulldogs.
View attachment 1787798

Glassing teammates kept everyone on edge. Clearly that edge was lacking in 2023

 

[_Cerberus_]

So according to a post season fixture analysis. We ended up having the third easiest draw.

Makes our season look even worse. Would hate to think what our W/L record would be with a harder one.

 

[Foxman98]

Not going to quote everyone but I stand by the after game sprints stuff being absolutely unnecessary when you haven't come on as the sub. I'm also not going to pat a professional athlete on the back for putting in 'extra' work, especially when they are the ones pumping up their own tyres.

Especially when running capacity has never been his issue,

If I saw him out there after the West Coast game practicing 20m kicks i'd be more impressed

 

[Next Waiting]

Especially when running capacity has never been his issue,

If I saw him out there after the West Coast game practicing 20m kicks i'd be more impressed

Hitting tackle bags for me

 

[hutchy31]

Especially when running capacity has never been his issue,

If I saw him out there after the West Coast game practicing 20m kicks i'd be more impressed

If I was him, I'd be asking one of the forwards to stay back and lead to me repeatedly - then I kick to that lead while running at full pace.

This is Baz's main problem (someone else mentioned it here or on another thread) - he consistently kicks over the forward's head, or in trying to hit their chest ends up skimming it along the ground. Practising kicking to a forward leading at him at game pace could do wonders.

If he gets Weightman to train that with him, then he could return the favour by letting Cody chase him around the ground and try and tackle him effectively. Two birds, one stone.

Obviously he/they could be doing loads of this in training and doing it fine, only to butcher it on game day. But given what we know about "goals kicking themselves" vs goal kicking training, I'm not so confident.

 

[Jeff 1975]

My thoughts, Looking back we have recruited very little since 2016, in fact we have gone backwards

We have recruited older players and moved on players in their prime, we can’t keep doing this. I understand players move around however the players that have gone would walk straight back in to our side. We have given up a lot and we see no improvement

Its clear we need a genuine tap ruckman, 4 or 5 players with genuine leg speed, a Forward that can kick straight, a Backman that can take a mark

We can not continue with current methods

 

[Ash1337]

Last year in the survey I replied with a finish of 10th about expectations of the season. Was near bang on. However from the results Dogs could have easily finished 4-6th if they won a few of those close games. So there's not all gloom. The Coaching refresh and another competent key defender maybe all it takes to get to finally become top 4.

 

[weltschmerz]

Not going to quote everyone but I stand by the after game sprints stuff being absolutely unnecessary when you haven't come on as the sub. I'm also not going to pat a professional athlete on the back for putting in 'extra' work, especially when they are the ones pumping up their own tyres.

I've always gotten the impression that it's Baz being really hard on himself, almost a punishment.