2019 Expectations

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F3000

F3000

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Aug 27, 2014
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Hayo fellow dogs!

Been a few months since I been on here - pretty much switch off AFL altogether between trade week and JLT. If this thread has been done already, please excuse me, i only scanned the first page before posting.

Having listened to David King break down our team on SEN this morning, as well as reading a bunch of other media outlets and basically anyone in the industry either predicting we'll drop down the ladder, or have no real way of identifying where we're at, or predicting our output with any real solid evidence, i'm really also left wondering what we're going to dish up in 2019, and having a real hard time knowing what to expect. It's like they've been watching all the West Ham games all off summer and completely moulded into my off season sporting club - Please stop.

So, what do you think are the clubs expectations for the year? I would assume making the 8 would be the minimum from a couching and club perspective, but it seems like a fairly large ask given our last 2 seasons, and a brief glimpse of this year over JLT, and now losing Morris. We really look like a bottom half of the ladder team, and realistically, potentially bottom four. So, are there then other agendas at play? We cannot continue to get younger and be in a constant rebuild, so what is the tipping point? I'm finding it really hard to focus on what should be our aim out of this season.

What are your expectations as supporters?

Im expecting a few things;

- Developing Big Shaq as a better, stronger forward and hoping he kicks 30-40+
- Getting some games into Naughton as a swingman, and hoping that Trengove is used as Morris' replacement.
- Getting as many games as possible into English as starting ruckman.
- Hopefully getting Tom Boyd back on the park, mentally and physically fit, back towards the form he was building in 2016
- Getting Libba, Wallis, Wood & Cordy back into their 2016 form to lead a tougher team.

I think this is about the best we can hope for, and as a result could potentially get us into the 8 if some other miracles go our way, but I can't even tell if that's realistic.

Thoughts?
 
On exposed form and the fact that we may now be 3 or even 4 senior spots down for the season before the first angry shot is fired, I am not feeling very bullish.

But, having low expectations makes it more likely that one will be pleasantly surprised.

I am keen to see how all the Baileys go and hope to see all three in the team and starring on a regular basis.
 
I am a bit flat this year, I am never a super optimist mind you. Usually there is some concrete basis for
getting up and about every year, but I am struggling to find it and I have looked believe me. I did a
wash up preview for every team ending with a sentence or summary for the Bulldogs it was "A tale of
the talls and the smalls, unfortunately a well told and familiar story at the kennel". Our mids are good
enough to contend and keep us in games, Naughton, Schache and English can give us hope long term,
but some of the other calls and non-calls have left me scratching my head to be honest. I don't care
if we go young because the losses are easily explained and I think most fans can see the bigger
picture and long term possible gains. Just give me honesty and heroic courage.
 

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I would like to see more consistency from the team in terms of

1. Effort: last year with such a young team we’d fluctuate massively from month to month, game to game, quarter to quarter. Last year we opened with 2 smashings, showed good form against the bombers and swans then went to Perth and got smashed by freo again. Looked better against some lower sides then got pumped by collingwood, crows and Melbourne. Looked better against port, north then beat the cats then got smashed for a month straight before our last month where we played well again. It was just a mess.

Even though we’ve got some key outs building, our midfield looks very healthy with Libba back and Bont injury free. This plus the experience of our young players in Richards, Naughton and Schache last year and Duryea and Lloyd being traded into roles at both ends means we should hopefully be a lot more consistent this year if we stay healthy. I’d like to see consistent four quarter efforts and far more competetive performances interstate.

2. Positions: I’d love to see our players really bed down a role in our best 22. Schache continueing to build his forward craft. Another year of Naughton in defense challenging the big boys. Wallis showing once again that he’s dangerous around the sticks. Richards and Bailey Smith developing on the wings. Bailey Williams starting to show his explosiveness in the midfield. Bont playing consistent midfield minutes and not being wasted contesting high kicks down the line. Wood building his form after a preseason training in his best position. Suckling, Daniel and JJ owning our aggressive forays off the half back flank.

Sadly from the looks of the JLT it doesn’t look like this will come to fruition. I’d like to think that bevo has rebalanced his flexibility mantra after two years of poor results but that doesn’t seem the case right now.

I think Croziers a really good example of what happens when you give a player consistent time in a position. All year last year he played that small intercepting rebounding half back and is now one of the most consistent players in our best 22 in terms of output.

Although I’m pessimistic, I’ll wait and see what happens when the real thing starts. I really hope they can establish these structures and roles quickly.

3. Gameplan: I’d love to see a proper, dangerous brand of footy fine tuned by the end of this season. We looked great last year when we played a high position kick-mark game last year but haven’t showed any sign of replicating that this JLT series with our high handball, low uncontested mark numbers.

I’d love to see something consistent and clean. Pretty pessimistic on this one as well though unfortunately. Hopefully come round 1 at Marvel I’ll change my tune!
 
I'm generally optimistic, but given the current state of our list, performance and you know, the vibe, I'm setting expectations low this year. That way, it will be easier to jump over a low bar. I think we will finish 11th-14th, will have a top-5 placing in the Brownlow, Schache 5th in the Coleman, JJ will legally change his name to Black Panther for 1 round a-la Garry Hocking/Whiskas, and Chris Hemsworth will be a surprise mid-year rookie listing. For one of the games at Mars, Bevo will coach dressed as a giant M&M.

But we will never sell our soul...!
 
Triple Baileys said:
On exposed form and the fact that we may now be 3 or even 4 senior spots down for the season before the first angry shot is fired, I am not feeling very bullish.

But, having low expectations makes it more likely that one will be pleasantly surprised.

I am keen to see how all the Baileys go and hope to see all three in the team and starring on a regular basis.
Click to expand...

Other than the Moz injury the management of the list with Picko , Boyd etc is something you would expect from a VAFA club.
Without knowing all the facts we are just guessing to the reasoning of the list management team.
As my mates all say , you bulldogs certainly keep your players a long time . Would any other club have been as patient . Loyalty is one thing. To have 10% of your list in the stands with long term issues is amatuerish . We are too worried about being good citizens.
 
F3000 said:
Hayo fellow dogs!

Been a few months since I been on here - pretty much switch off AFL altogether between trade week and JLT. If this thread has been done already, please excuse me, i only scanned the first page before posting.

Having listened to David King break down our team on SEN this morning, as well as reading a bunch of other media outlets and basically anyone in the industry either predicting we'll drop down the ladder, or have no real way of identifying where we're at, or predicting our output with any real solid evidence, i'm really also left wondering what we're going to dish up in 2019, and having a real hard time knowing what to expect. It's like they've been watching all the West Ham games all off summer and completely moulded into my off season sporting club - Please stop.

So, what do you think are the clubs expectations for the year? I would assume making the 8 would be the minimum from a couching and club perspective, but it seems like a fairly large ask given our last 2 seasons, and a brief glimpse of this year over JLT, and now losing Morris. We really look like a bottom half of the ladder team, and realistically, potentially bottom four. So, are there then other agendas at play? We cannot continue to get younger and be in a constant rebuild, so what is the tipping point? I'm finding it really hard to focus on what should be our aim out of this season.

What are your expectations as supporters?

Im expecting a few things;

- Developing Big Shaq as a better, stronger forward and hoping he kicks 30-40+
- Getting some games into Naughton as a swingman, and hoping that Trengove is used as Morris' replacement.
- Getting as many games as possible into English as starting ruckman.
- Hopefully getting Tom Boyd back on the park, mentally and physically fit, back towards the form he was building in 2016
- Getting Libba, Wallis, Wood & Cordy back into their 2016 form to lead a tougher team.

I think this is about the best we can hope for, and as a result could potentially get us into the 8 if some other miracles go our way, but I can't even tell if that's realistic.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...


Excellent dot points, I fully agree

Yes we need to play English in the ruck or we run the risk of losing him to another club

I would add, getting games into Lewis Young he could be a big bonus

Playing English in the ruck & Jackson Trengove in the backline (I prefer centre half back) would free us up quite a bit

Your other dot points are spot-on

Unfortunately I can’t see us doing better than last year, potentially bottom four
 
I’m always pretty optimistic, especially at the start of a new season but I just can’t understand what we’re trying to achieve in recent times. There doesn’t seem to be a recognisable aim with list managenent, game plan, individual players positions and plans for their future development. I’m flummoxed! I just hope there is a grand plan that I haven’t been able to understand and we see it begin to open up before our eyes on Saturday night. I’ll be there in my usual state of enthusiastic extreme anxiety and hoping for a very pleasant surprise.
 
Last edited:
Pagnoccolo C said:
I just hope their is a grand plan that I haven’t been able to understand and we see it begin to open up before our eyes on Saturday night. I’ll be there in my usual state of enthusiastic extreme anxiety and hoping for a very pleasant surprise.
Click to expand...

I’m right there with you mate. Never wanted to be wrong more than ever...
 
F3000 said:
I’m right there with you mate. Never wanted to be wrong more than ever...
Click to expand...
Same here. What worries me greatly is that our pre season form last year mirrored our season proper fairly closely last season, so I'm just hoping that our form for this pre season is not indicative of how we will go this year.
 

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DogDays said:
I’m calling it, we are playing finals this year. Come at me!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...
Why?

It's your opinion you are entitled to. Not sure why you need to comment on those who pick 4, 5 or 6 wins when the body of evidence suggests this is more likely than 13 plus or 12 with a large percentage required to play finals in the predictions thread
 
Expectations....

Mine were heading towards the higher side until the injuries started to pile up. They took another blow during the JLT when it became apparent (in my opinion) that English is still a year or two off.

I don't really care whether we won JLT games or not. The way we played just didn't set the world on fire. We don't look like we can kick a score, especially with Gowers not the same player as last year.

You never know, but I expect we'll finish in the bottom 8. Its tough at the moment and very even competition.
 
Minimal expectations, but would love a red hot crack each & every week
 
I don't know how we will go.

Footy's a funny game.

Looking fwd to seeing what happens.
 
It optimistic, and I usually am. We seem to be doing the same thing year after year. Didn’t Einstein once say, a definition of a idiot is doing the same actions expecting a different result, or words to that effect.
 
I think we will just be the exact same as last year more or less.
 
Everyone thought we were shot heading into 2015 - then we won the first two games with only 26 goals but with +40 tackles and +37 contested possessions.

The method doesn't need to be the same, but Bev needs to have the boys going into Saturday's game believing that there a few key things that they're going to do to that will win it for them.

I'm not as fussed as some others about the JLT results (yes, the forward line looked crap frequently). Terrible weather is still the kryptonite to our gameplan because:

(a) it functions best when we are able to flood the midfield a bit, move the ball by lots of short/medium kicks from our backline (mitigating our contested marking issues) with the occasional dash from JJ (almost exclusively, unfortunately), and use that build up to set up a wall from midfield to half forward to keep the ball (and win it back) around our attacking arc if we do turn it over after getting it into our forward line; and

(b) we still have enough poor kicks in our side that in bad weather (and frequently in good weather...) the short kicking game goes to crap for huge chunks of the game. The old adage about the most skilled players standing out in the wet comes to mind.

The gameplan is plainly devised to function best at the Docklands - surprise, surprise. Offensively, our attempts at moving the ball by short/medium, precise kicking are never impacted by inclement weather and, defensively, the ground is short enough that when we do stack the midfield/half forward it's harder for the opposition to break out than at larger grounds, like Adelaide Oval and Manuka, where we got throttled last year.

The odd thing, given that (I believe) it's roughly the same size as Docklands, is that we got smashed twice at Optus Stadium. But aside from one glorious exception, trips to Perth have always been torture for us and I don't think the ground dimensions have much to do with it.

I think it'll be hard without JJ's run, but I'd like to see us really emphasise the chip, mark and run game that worked well against Ess, Syd, Rich and North last year. I'm hoping for more defensive organisation when we stack the midfield and more lowered eyes when we're 60-80m out. I'm hoping to see Bev devise strategies for when the high volume kicking gameplay isn't effective. I'm hoping to see us continue to improve upon those forward 50 stoppage setups that netted Bont and others goals over the last few rounds last year. I'm also hoping that our half forwards especially (McLean, Wallis, Dunkley, Lipinski, Greene, Richards?, Lynch?, Dale?) really buy into attacking the contest like maniacs when either the opposition have the ball in our forward 50 (all those delicious turnovers by the Saints & North) or it's up for grabs (e.g. Lipinski and Lynch against Richmond). Do that and THE GOALS WILL KICK THEMSELVES (jks).

There is a plan and it can work. Last year it worked for a number of whole games, and for a half of several others (Hawthorn, Collingwood, Melbourne). Hopefully with another pre-season those half-games will turn into 3/4 or full games. Libba back as a contested bull and a good user/goal kicker will help immensely. If Lloyd and Duryea can replace two poorer kicks in the side, that will help. If Naughton can give us a viable bail-out option when the short kicks aren't working, that will help too.

Swans by 61.
 
Somewhere between 10 and 16th just can't see us scoring enough to win regularly
Hope I am wrong just not seeing it right now
 
doggy heaven said:
Other than the Moz injury the management of the list with Picko , Boyd etc is something you would expect from a VAFA club.
Without knowing all the facts we are just guessing to the reasoning of the list management team.
As my mates all say , you bulldogs certainly keep your players a long time . Would any other club have been as patient . Loyalty is one thing. To have 10% of your list in the stands with long term issues is amatuerish . We are too worried about being good citizens.
Click to expand...

I dunno the reasons and the contractual issues, all I know is that we appear to have 3, maybe 4 (Morris, Boyd, Picken, Webb) who won't play this year if ever again. It's going to be like last season, we are going to have to play the kids and even all the rookies. But who knows, some of those kids have games under their belts now from last season, maybe we win some more a little and don't get smashed so often when we lose.
 
Triple Baileys said:
I dunno the reasons and the contractual issues, all I know is that we appear to have 3, maybe 4 (Morris, Boyd, Picken, Webb) who won't play this year if ever again. It's going to be like last season, we are going to have to play the kids and even all the rookies. But who knows, some of those kids have games under their belts now from last season, maybe we win some more a little and don't get smashed so often when we lose.
Click to expand...
Today's injury report suggests at least two of them will be running out in the RW&B before mid-season. It's up to them whether that will be in the AFL or the VFL.
Moz ... who knows?
The only one in serious doubt is Picko and given what he has done for the club - and perhaps can still do - I reckon it's not too big a price to pay to carry him for the year in the hope that he can play again.
 
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