Sons of the West… and of Diabolical Inefficiency

In the 1939 movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’, and in one of cinema’s most iconic scenes, Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Lion and Scarecrow all arrive in Emerald City hoping to catch a glimpse of a mythical, god-like figure named ‘Oz’.

What they instead encounter is a middle-aged carnival worker from Kansas who well and truly busts whatever majestic force the quartet had in mind, leaving Dorothy and her band of misfits utterly devastated. 

Bulldog fans are beginning to understand how they all felt that day.

Luke Beveridge was once the Bulldog’s ‘Oz’. 

Their mythical hero who took over the club at one of their periodic low points and ultimately granted their long suffering fans all of their wishes.

Finals in his first year, a premiership in the second and 62 years of championship virginity wiped away in one glorious afternoon of pure splendor. 

His name will go down in footballing history for his part in that championship, while Bulldog fans will forever hold him in their now premiership satiated hearts.

Yet, Beveridge has now lost his cult status. 

The Feds have stormed Rajneeshpuram and the guru is nowhere to be seen. 

Since the 2016 premiership the best thing you can say about the dogs is that they’ve been underwhelming. The worst thing you could say is that they’ve been deplorable. 

Either option isn’t ideal. 

This was always going to be a massive season for the club. 

Their premiership defense in 2017 yielded just 11 wins and they became the first team in ten years to fail to return to Finals after winning a flag. 

Last season they lost four of their first five matches which effectively meant they were behind the eight ball all season. They ended up with just eight wins and finished 13th.

However, the Dogs did win three of their last four games while losing their final match to the reigning champs and premiership favorite Richmond by just 3 points which provided genuine hope at the kennel.

That hope is now already gone.

2019 really couldn’t have started any worse for either the Dogs or the fading aura of their coach.

They’ve already chalked up losses to the Gold Coast and Carlton and now look certain to miss Finals for a third straight season.

The last team to win a premiership and miss finals for three straight campaigns? 

Hawthorn after winning the 1978 flag. 

This is one hell of a premiership hangover at the Whitten Oval.

The most alarming thing about the post 2016 Bulldogs is a complete lack of identity regarding playing style or personnel.

Where Beveridge was once your cool sister introducing you to Pink Floyd and cannabis, he’s now become your lame uncle who wants you to watch golf with him on TV and fetch him beers.

These Dogs are all over the place.

They’re slow and their foot skills are often particularly poor.

They’ve little to no aerial threat outside their young sensation Aaron Naughton. 

The leadership vacuum left by the likes of Murphy, Boyd, Picken and Morris seems as vast as that premiership drought.

The difference at the moment between their best player, Marcus Bontempelli, and their next best, is uncomfortably large.

More than anything however is how phenomenally inefficient the team is once inside 50.

In Beveridge’s first couple of seasons, he drastically changed the way the team played.

Under former coach Brendan McCartney, there was an unyielding focus on the defensive aspects of Bulldog’s game. They tackled plenty and won a heap of contested football though they were thoroughly lacking in imagination and dare.

In McCartney’s last season as coach, the dogs ranked eight in the league for disposal efficiency at 72.2% with one of the league’s most skewed differences insofar as the ratio between uncontested and contested football was concerned.

McCartney’s Bulldogs rarely had the ball and when they did they had little breathing room which contributed to a dearth of inside forward 50 entries.

Within one year of arriving, Beveridge's Bulldogs were 5th for inside 50s, 6th for disposal efficiency (73.5%) and ranked 7th in the league for uncontested possession.

There was a newfound freedom to these dogs. A joy de vie. A feeling that anything was possible.

Beveridge’s golden bolt cutters had well and truly broken through McCartney’s chains and was justifiably being lauded as one of the game’s pre-eminent minds.

Within a season Beveridge transformed the Bulldogs from a slow, stodgy unit into a modern, quick in transition team that possessed elite foot skills and who most importantly could keep the scoreboard ticking over.

POINTS PER GAME LAST 2 SEASONS UNDER MCCARTNEY v FIRST SEASON UNDER BEVERIDGE

2013 – 87.5 (13)

2014 – 81.1 (13)

2015 – 95.5 (4)

Those gains of 2015 would of course be parlayed into the 2016 Premiership. 

Effectively the dogs became increasingly secure in the Beveridge game plan. 

Their tactical advancements had merged perfectly with the tenacity of the McCartney approach to create a prefect formula for September football.

When the 2016 Finals arrived the Bulldog Swiss army knife was well-oiled and ready to use. Their opponents and wider football world couldn’t believe what hit them and by the first of October the league’s perennial bottom feeder was now league champion. 

The thrill however of that Finals run is now however but a beautiful memory. 

The Dogs are back to being decidedly ordinary and have come nowhere close to employing the brand of football Beveridge unleashed during that span. In fact, it’s rather unclear what ‘brand’ of football this Bulldogs team is employing though. It’s what’s happening once inside 50 where a tale of pure doom and gloom is taking place. 

BULLDOGS GOAL PERCENTAGE ONCE INSIDE 50 UNDER BEVERIDGE

2015 – 25.71%

2016 – 22.76%

2017 – 21.61%

2018 – 19.58%

2019 – 17.05 %

In each season under Beveridge, the Bulldogs are getting less and less bang for their buck from their forward forays.

Whether the drop off is a result of a diminishing quality going forward, a lack of marking options once there, quite clearly terrible conversion rate or opponents no longer being intimidated by Beveridge, the fact remains the Bulldog coach is in quite a pickle in terms of his team’s efficiency.

A one year drop off in any metric is excusable, perhaps even a couple can be rationalised, yet five season’s of clear regression in such an important facet of the game is highly concerning for Beveridge.

The Dogs 305 forward entries in 2019 rank second in the competition. These dogs are virtually living inside 50 yet making absolutely nothing of their time there.

We are, of course, just 5 games into the season.

The Bulldogs 2-3 mark is the same as Melbourne’s last year and the Demons of course rallied and ended up contesting a preliminary final.

No, five games needn’t spell the end of any team’s season yet what’s revealed within that five game sample can tell you an awful lot about your team. In the Bulldogs case the evidence is compelling enough to believe the Dogs are in quite a bit of strife and have been for three years now.

Can Beveridge prove himself to be one of the league’s best coaches and re-transform the club into a competitive, innovative unit once again?

Or will three terrible seasons without Finals prompt the Bulldogs to look for another coach at season’s end?

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