With six minutes to go in the second quarter of the Bulldogs’ dismembering of GWS on Saturday afternoon, the Bulldogs had a passage of play that will live on.
With the score at 55-23 and the Bulldogs on a tear, Sam Darcy received a handball on centre wing. He turned and immediately hit a daisy cutter to a leading Aaron Naughton.
Naughton turned quickly and hit a perfectly weighted ball to Marcus Bontempelli, who was streaming toward goal through an open forward line, replacing where Naughton had started his lead.
It was poetry. But it also screamed to the competition, “look how fucking good we are”.
The Dogs are now 2-0 against two finalists from last year, including the reigning premier.
It was Tommy Shelby outthinking Billy Kimber to become the main power in Birmingham.
It was a statement of a new world order.
But does it have staying power?
Or is it more like Kendall Roy turning on his dad only to fumble it away?
To answer that, you have to look at what’s different for the Bulldogs and what’s the same.
Bevo-ball has always focused on contest, transition, and time in forward half. They are currently third in clearances, first in stoppage scoring, dominant in most transition stats, and while their time in forward half numbers are relatively low through two games, they’ve scored an average of 50 front half points across their two games this season.
They also still have Marcus Bontempelli, Ed Richards and the other stars.
They’re still good at Bevo-ball.
The point of interest is what’s different, starting with the forward line.
Last year, Aaron Naughton played a genuine centre half forward role. Of his 12 touches a game, about 5 of them came outside the forward 50 and the other seven were inside 50. He roamed the ground and tried to provide exit options out of defence.
This year, Naughton’s inside 50 touches are up to 7.5 a game and he’s getting about half a possession less outside the forward 50.
The Bulldogs are playing him closer to goal and using Sam Darcy more as a centre half forward where he can use his exquisite field kicking. It’s working brilliantly as Naughton has kicked eight goals over the two games and is currently leading the competition in overall scoreboard impact, while not quelling Sam Darcy’s influence.
The other difference is the Bulldogs’ deployment of Rhylee West. West has long been one of my favourite players because he’s creative and strong in 1v1s but this year, the Bulldogs are using him in what looks like a new role that is proliferating across the league.
Damien Hardwick famously invented the “striker” role with Dustin Martin and now Christian Petracca, It’s a centre bounce player who then plays basically just in the forward half. It was usually a bullocking, strong type of player that can hold up under the physicality of playing midfield.
In keeping with a broader movement across the AFL, I think that position is changing shape and getting smaller and faster and Rhylee West is a good example.
West is not a centre bounce player, but he is occupying the liminal space between forward and midfield, often playing as the sinew that connects the two phases of the game. He’s not a high possession player but he lives in dangerous areas and is highly damaging out of them, with four score involvements from his 13 disposals on Saturday.
But the Dogs have always been good at attacking, they’re just being good at attacking in a different way now. What’s interesting is how they defended, especially against GWS.
Now before I get into this, I want to say up front this is that I know this is not a good defensive team and they copped 100 points in their win against Brisbane last week.
I also want to say that, according to the AFL’s chief abuser of the long tweet for articles that no reputable publication will publish Ronny Lerner, the Dogs have beaten GWS by an average of 53 points over their last five meetings so maybe we can’t take too much from beating them badly again.
But they were interesting in defence against GWS.
The first thing to note is that, in a game where they were massively outgunned in terms of defensive talent versus forwards, the Bulldogs completely gummed up the GWS forward line.
Whenever GWS exited defence slowly, the Bulldogs flooded deep defence won with scrappiness and desperation. They’ve done this in season’s past, of course, but against GWS it was pronounced.
While that did limit their numbers ahead of the ball a bit, the Dogs’ running power and work rate going the other way meant that their transition game was still reasonably effective. Similarly, while their front half game wasn’t as dominant as it usually is because they were willing to occasionally give GWS exits, their aggression in spurts was still effective as they kicked 11.3 from the front half and they fractionally won time in forward half.
The other thing is their personnel changes.
The Dogs have made two major changes to their defensive stocks. While Rory Lobb was unfortunately still following Jesse Hogan around, the introduction of Connor Budarick and the settlement of Buku Khamis as a defender has given them a little bit more spine and athleticism in the back half.
We’re not exactly talking Scarlett and Rance here, but when you have the firepower that the Bulldogs have ahead of the ball, just being good enough behind it probably is going to be enough.
If the forward structure holds and the defence is passable, the Bulldogs don’t need to reinvent themselves.
They just need to be the best version of what they already are.
And if the first two weeks are anything to go by, that version might be good enough to scare the entire competition.