Familiar Bombers can’t defend
Losing was not unexpected for this Essendon side, sadly it never really is any more. Losing in this way to a side that last week lost to North Melbourne was a surprise. But only a mild one, this is Essendon.
Ok, maybe North isn’t bad this year and maybe Port are better than last week’s loss suggested. But what is clear is no one is under any delusions that Essendon are a good team now. Even the five-goal last quarter and excitement about Nate Caddy’s solo effort don’t change that.
Few people thought they would be good this year, even those inside the club – just ask Zach Merrett – but did anyone, even Merrett, think they would be a side that kicks just two goals for a half and goes nearly 10 goals down by half-time against a side that is unlikely to be a finalist. They were supposed to have injured players back this year yet those that have returned have made no difference and meantime more players continue to disappear to injury.
The familiar nature of the loss was the depressing sight for Bombers who comfortably look a bottom four team. Since the mid-season bye last year Essendon have only kept teams under 100 points four times, and they still lost all four of those games. Teams find them easy to score against.
Watching this game with Ken Hinkley commentating, fresh out of coaching the opposition team, made for an amusing exercise in restraint and frustration with Essendon. Bombers fans could relate.
“It’s too familiar. D-50 transition is too easy against Essendon,” Hinkley opined in the third quarter after yet another coast to coast unencumbered goal.
“They are trying to play this handball game, they are not capable of handling the pressure that is against them.”
Essendon gave up 157 marks to Hawthorn last week, on Sunday Port took 165. Sides just possess the ball and pick through Essendon.
“It just does not look like there is enough intensity from the opposition. The ball is just too easily chipped around, and sometimes you have to go back to work and find an opponent, find a direct opponent as soon as the ball is turned over, find someone don’t just stand and watch the game unfold,” Hinkley said.
If Essendon thought they were in the market for Zac Butters before Sunday it is hard to think the game strengthened their case. It is doubtful Butters walked from the Adelaide Oval thinking “that looks like the team for me” particularly when he probably caught the Bulldogs game on Friday night beating the team Port loathes most.
A senior football person at another club said during the game the decision not to trade Merrett last off season and yield three first round draft picks, regardless of the quality of those picks, was poor at the time and made to look worse now. The reasons for not doing the trade were reasonable to me but by the week you can see the pragmatist’s argument gains strength.
The club administration may have been unified in going all in on a draft rebuild at Essendon but that unity across all levels of the club will be tested by the week when they play like that and the time frame for the hoped improvement feels like it drifts further away.
Air Naughton
Aaron Naughton arrived at the Western Bulldogs having never played as a forward. He then spent the entirety of his career at the Dogs as a forward.
He has also spent the entirety of that career the subject of debate about whether he should, in fact, be a forward and not a back. For periods it has been doubtful if he was the best forward at the club.
Presently, he might be the best forward in the AFL. He is certainly in the conversation along with Jack Gunston and Ben King, for the most influential, which is also one of the reasons the Dogs are suddenly now even this early in the early season, in the serious conversation of premiership contenders.
In his last 11 home and away games Naughton has kicked 45 goals. This year his 11 goals in three games have also come at 84 per cent accuracy.
As importantly he’s taken nine marks inside 50, only Gunston and King have taken more.
Last year the Bulldogs had the third-best percentage in the competition but missed the eight. The reason was well known – they would smash the lesser teams and lose to the good ones. It was figured to be a defensive breakdown against the good teams, which was as glib a statement of the obvious as there is.
At the end of last season the Bulldogs post-mortem of the summer looked more deeply at the losses against those good teams, and they found a thread. It was not a single structural failing nor a weakness of key personnel instead there were regular lapses for periods in each game in the relative intensity and pressure. The good teams would hunt and pressure for just as intensely and for longer than the Dogs. In those comparative lax periods for the Dogs in each game the opposition would score quickly.
Bulldogs insiders say that previously Luke Beveridge was reluctant to have the players regularly train at high intensity tackling figuring the injury risk was not worth it. Last summer he decided the risk was worth taking knowing that if players weren’t regularly training it, then they also wouldn’t regularly perform it.
So they spent the summer smashing each other, working harder at building that element of their game. It is showing results.
Fortunately, they have not picked up injuries, but they have picked up wins. They have now beaten the reigning premier and last year’s minor premier – both on their home grounds.
That is a big difference in just year-on-year in results. The results are coming because of the big change in method. They are playing with a spread of pressure that is making them harder to score against. In the heat of opening round the Lions kicked over 100 points, and lost, but since then the Dogs kept GWS to 53 points and Adelaide to 88.
Importantly on Friday night they laid 71 tackles to the Crows’ 47. They had 20 tackles inside 50 to the Crows’ 8. It’s a small sample size of three games but Naughton and Sam Darcy have each laid the second most tackles in the league inside 50 with two to three each per game.
Now ideally you want your tall forwards taking marks inside 50 not laying tackles, but Naughton is doing both. He is behind only King and Gunston for marks inside 50 with an average of three a game.
Naughton lands from marks and stays in the play to immediately put pressure on. His third goal on Friday night came from free kick for laying a tackle.
This is a measure of the difference in the Dogs. So too is the emergence of Buku Khamis and James O’Donnell. Khamis was a solid player before, but this year has been outstanding. Last week he played on both Jake Stringer and Jesse Hogan last week, on Friday night he was able to take both Taylor Walker and Izak Rankine at times and won his spot. O’Donnell has looked like a battler until this season when he is starting to repay what had felt like a stubborn persistence from Luke Beveridge.
Oscar Baker encore
First came Izak Rankine and there was shock that a goal could be kicked from where he was but no surprise at who it was who conjured it. Then came Oscar Baker and there was a similar shock that you could squeeze a goal from the boundary on the run like that but also that the conjurer was Oscar Baker a player previously mainly only notable at AFL level for looking like Phil Maylin.
All things have been falling into place for the Dogs. It was a brilliant kick and a deserving match winner.
Fine with Voss fine
Patrick Voss wouldn’t cop someone doing to him what he did to Harrison Petty. The ruffle of the hair that Petty has left and wiping his eyes to tease Petty about crying was schoolboy stuff. A junior coach would have told him to pull his head in. Instead, it was left to the AFL to hit him with a fine.
Whether it is something they should be fining a player for and whether it should be considered part of football theatre and pantomime is debatable. What was clear was it was classless.
Michael Gleeson is an award-winning senior sports writer specialising in AFL and athletics.Connect via X or email.