Autopsy Western Bulldogs 2023 season review

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Only good things I saw was the improvement in Marra, and the emergence of JOD.

I hope Bont wins the Brownlow, but I am pessimistic of that, I watched Scott West be runner up for years and lose to a spud.
 

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Worse season then last year and comfortably our worst since 2018. What’s really bad is our list compared with 2018 is heavily ageing. We’re going backwards and going backwards fast.

The west coast game sums it up. Last year we pumped them by 100 points on their home deck. This year they’re more of a rabble and we had a finals spot on the line and they get us.

This is on top of arguably two career best seasons by Bont and Libba. Imagine how in the bin we’d be if we didn’t have them putting the team on their backs each week.
 
Worse season then last year and comfortably our worst since 2018. What’s really bad is our list compared with 2018 is heavily ageing. We’re going backwards and going backwards fast.

The west coast game sums it up. Last year we pumped them by 100 points on their home deck. This year they’re more of a rabble and we had a finals spot on the line and they get us.

This is on top of arguably two career best seasons by Bont and Libba. Imagine how in the bin we’d be if we didn’t have them putting the team on their backs each week.
The defensive system poison of last year's zoning off and not bothering to man the mark still well and truly in our veins this year though.

That was the year where the lasting damage was done. Awful habits that need a hard reset under new player management.
 
Up to round 10 was ok, had 5 wins in a row.

After that...


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Sadly we have ourselves to blame for putting ourselves in this position... Finishing outside the top 6 with that list is a failure . More pressure on Bevo and the impotent coaching staff now hopefully

Bright lights were Jamarra, O'Donnell, Ed Richards had a good year, Bont did everything humanly possible.most weeks. Jones was fantastic down back. Libba had a fantastic year.. West came good as the year went on

Forward line totally dysfunctional mainly from the senior players. Naughton should practise his goal kicking all summer as he was shocking and cost us games with his kicking for goal.

Pissed the year up the wall..
 
There’s no excuses for this season. Absolutely wasted year.

Obviously the first two weeks were absolute stinkers. Bounced back to 7-3, don’t think we were really setting the world alight but were getting the job done. Had a couple of excellent performances against Fremantle and Adelaide. Had the chance to really set ourselves in the top four but lost all of the next three to get back to the pack. Gold Coast and Port weren’t the worst losses in my opinion but should’ve beaten a depleted Cats side at home.

Still find ourselves at 9-7 after the Collingwood game with a very soft run home. A depleted Sydney, Essendon, GWS in Ballarat, Richmond, Hawthorn, West Coast and a depleted Geelong. No way we should’ve lost any of those games (GWS are a good team but shouldn’t have lost from 6 goals up). It’s astonishing to miss the finals from that position.

Really have no excuse to have not won 15 games this year, don’t think the draw could’ve worked out much better. Ended up being very soft, seemed to play teams at good times, Sydney and Geelong(x2) when they were really banged up, Carlton when they were at their shittest, got to play Adelaide and Brisbane in Vic instead of their home where they performed very well. It’s just so disappointing to end up in this position after we performed so poorly in 2022 and should’ve had a good hard look at ourselves at the end of the season and made some fixes. But we half assed it and ended up in a significant worse position at the end of this season.
 
Same mistakes year in year out with this club.

Beveridge needs to go. Had way too many chances and the fact that he continually gets away with the massive under achieving of this team shits me to no end.

It was the wrong decision to re-sign him last year.

Will they get rid of him? Most likely not.

Injuries? Didn’t help. Certainly no excuse for coughing up a 40 point lead and losing to GWS, plus then losing to Hawthorn and losing to one of the worst sides in recent years in West Coast.

Also lost winnable games against the Swans, Gold Coast and Geelong.

Missing the finals should be viewed as an absolute and unequivocal disaster and everyone except for Bonti and Libba should be put under the microscop.

Thats all I’ve got.
 

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Thank you Bevo. Been one hell of a ride. Many dizzying highs and many pathetic lows but ultimately you delivered the highest of highs and times we will never forget.

GF day 2016 and the summer months after it were purely magical. The day itself was far more than I had ever imagined it would be - truly a special day for all Footscray/Western Bulldogs people 🔴⚪🔵

But now it's time we part and move onwards and upwards for all involved.
 
7-3 after 10 games. Then only 2 interstate games after that and we completely fell apart.
No idea how we make scoring look so difficult at times and make it look so easy for all of our opponents. And the most frustrating part is we just turn off for a quarter or 2 and then the games gone. Don't know what the solution is to turn this around but there needs to be drastic changes.
Most worrying sign is that we don't really have any young guys breaking into the team apart from JOD. Last 3 rising star nominations were Baz, Cody and Jamarra.
 
Loved seeing the debut of improvement in JOD... some people just have "it"

Jamarra: With the improved fitness and physical strength he will acquire with another preseason he will improve again next year and might well be a superstar

Bont: Won't win the brownlow because we did not win enough games to get him 3 vs 2 votes but hopefully will win the MVP. Also dread to think where we would be without him

Jones early in the season pre injury

Arty jones was flashy for a few weeks and highlighted how much better we would be with a good and consistent small forward

That's it.

My love for Bevo, the game plan and the team has become an indifference.

I can't even look forward the fall-out because of certain members in the media and their personal agendas trying to square things up against bevo and not providing any constructive criticism.
 
Lots of positives from this year.

Jamarra went a long way to showing he’s an emerging superstar.

English improved again.

JOD was an incredible recruit.

Ed when healthy continued to be awesome.

Jj when healthy was awesome down back.

West showed he’s got a great career ahead of him and he’s exactly what we need.

Cody continued to show he’s an emerging gun

Scott was pretty solid. He could be an alright soldier
 
Positives: JOD, JUH, JJ, Jones, Richards and the Carlton game

Negatives: Few notably awful performances (Melbourne, Saints, West Coast, Hawthorn), losing close games and playing an unwatchable style
 
Season rating D-. Aging list and we have lot of list cloggers. McNeill, Scott, VDM, Baker, Poulter, McComb, Garcia, Gardiner. Finished Duryea, Crozier, McClean Never given a chance Sweet, Cleary, Buku
 
Just an absolute disaster of a season, I didn’t think we could top last year but we brought in Jones & Lobb, two very important structural pieces, Marra was pretty much a new addition, career best and league leading seasons from English, Bont & Libba….

And we went backwards in every single facet in the game, apart from a few individual shining lights there was literally zero team based positives this year.

Unacceptable, coaches don’t survive this, if you’ve got any respect for the club and yourself Beveridge please simply walk the * away
 
This was a complete waste of a season. The coaching strategy continues to be s**t and has made us the most frustrating team to watch in the whole AFL. Our inability to defend ball movement while at the same time be incapable of stringing together good chains of possession has characterised the whole season. We give up more runs of goals against than any team other than West Coast and North Melbourne. We rely totally on Libba and Bont to get the ball, if either of them are down or out of the team we are uncompetitive.

Our pressure at times is just not AFL standard. It’s like we expect to just turn up and win on talent alone.

Goal kicking accuracy continues to be a massive issue, particularly for our key forwards with both Naughton and Jamarra being terribly inaccurate and has cost us wins for sure. I really don’t think they practice it under any sort of pressure.

Major changes are needed but I just have a feeling nothing much will happen.
 
How did we stuff this year up??????
On the run home just about every result went our way, all we had to do was win our own games and we were set. We stuffed that up.
We play Adelaide, Geelong with half their teams missing.Get a big lead against GWS. We stuffed that up.
JOD, Ed Richards, Jones ( the other one definitely not Arty) and JUH going great guns and Bont and Libba being there usual selves and top 4 was ours. We stuffed it up.
I got nothing else.
 

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