2019 Round 1: Western Bulldogs v Sydney Swans @ Marvel Stadium

[Steve]

It was a bad mistake to re-sign Grundy if they're going to play him even when there's no match-up - in fact there really shouldn't be many times we need the 3 of Melican, Aliir and Grundy. Particularly when we also have Rampe who actually plays best on those ~190cm forwards who he can match one-on-one but then run off.

I just can't buy the 'we finally played the way we wanted in the last quarter, and it looked OK' excuse. We get that far behind that we eventually move half the side around, throw caution to the wind, and things open up - but there's no way in hell that's what we'll do from the start on Friday night.

The midfield is a massive concern - really a barrier to us being a decent team. When you think 2.5 years ago we would have been looking ahead and expecting to have Hannebery and Mitchell at their best now, that is the loss we have to deal with and replace. It's still curious we were chasing guys like Moore and Langdon for 2019 given where our deficiency is. As much as I can't stand him (or his Dad) we should have taken a risk on Liberatore and offered a 2 or 3-year deal, which could have been on modest money.

I don't think we have any other option but to use Heeney, and at times Mills, as permanent midfielders - they will get badly beaten regularly (at least in the short-term), but we have to fact-track some better options to support Parker and Kennedy. Maybe even Dawson - given him an extended run to see if he can be an inside midfielder, not just a half-forward who has minimal impact.

Otherwise come up with a different game plan based around virtually surrendering the midfield battle (at least against the better midfields / teams), and winning the contests at either end of the ground.

I hope I'm wrong but without some significant adjustments I can easily see it being another 0-6.

[Auntie.Gerald]

Did anyone else notice how much the bulldogs backs pushed off our med to small defenders

Mclean (not very fast) for example was sprinting away from macca and on one occasion (early third qtr) just gave and go with macca only one yard behind and still asked for the ball

It looked like a suicide give and go by McLean but macca just couldn’t close the gap on a slow player

A few mins later macca was marked up on an interesting match up “English” inside the arc on a lead !!!! Go figure ??

I was trying to think of a player in the competition that one yard away from McLean couldn’t catch him ? Especially when he had to prop to receive the ball and then still got away from macca to create a flood forward

The dogs had Plan to expose our slow defenders and it worked

I love macca in attack building the transition but boy or boy we got destroyed in match ups in times where nothing much was doing but the dogs could tear away and create desperation

[Velour&Ruffles]

Jones does get caught from time to time, and sometimes makes disposal errors, but usually when he's trying to take the game on and make something happen. I don't think it's reasonable to criticise a player doing this for the odd mistakes they make, while at the same time bemoaning the general tendency of the team not to take risks and try and move the ball on in an unpredictable fashion.

Great comment. We need more dare - the conservatism is killing us. If it comes unstuck every now and again then so be it.