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After losing their coach, captain, a Brownlow Medallist, CEO and over 800 games of experience at the end of last season, the immediate future was looking very bleak for the Western Bulldogs.
Their 2014 season had concluded with a six-point loss to Greater Western Sydney in a match which will forever be remembered for Jake Stringer dropping an uncontested mark with 30 seconds remaining, in which the scores were level.
In the immediate aftermath, captain Ryan Griffen requested to be traded to the Giants, where he was to be reunited with former Western Bulldogs assistant coach Leon Cameron and former teammates Callan Ward and Dylan Addison.
That was then followed by Brendan McCartney resigning as head coach, following an unsuccessful three years at the helm of a side which was still reeling from a hat-trick of preliminary final losses and the retirement of captain Brad Johnson.
Communication issues between McCartney and Griffen were what led both parties to leave the Whitten Oval twenty-four hours apart, seemingly leaving a trail of destruction behind them in the process.
Their departures followed on from the retirement of Daniel Giansiracusa, who remains at the club today in an assistant coaching role, and the departures of Shaun Higgins and 2008 Brownlow Medallist Adam Cooney to North Melbourne and Essendon respectively.
Then, in January this year, their CEO, Simon Garlick, resigned after presiding over a difficult period for the club in which the unfortunately-timed arrivals of the Gold Coast Suns and GWS Giants robbed most clubs of access to the majority of the first round draft picks from the 2010 and 2011 (and subsequently later) AFL drafts.
The Western Bulldogs were among the clubs that suffered, losing Jarrod Harbrow and Callan Ward, neither of whom had reached the 100-game milestone until they did at their new clubs, to the Suns and Giants respectively.
And if that wasn’t enough, they also lost their reigning best-and-fairest, Tom Liberatore, to a season-ending ACL injury during the NAB Challenge.
The only positives to come out of the Whitten Oval during the off-season was the arrival of 2013 number one draft pick Tom Boyd from the GWS Giants, and the appointments of the untried Luke Beveridge as coach and Bob Murphy as captain.
The tumultuous events of the off-season culminated in the club being considered one of the favourites to win this year’s wooden spoon.
But nobody would have forecast how the Bulldogs have started this season, and the Beveridge era. The club has won four of their five openers and are emerging as one of the teams to watch in 2015.
They defeated the West Coast Eagles, Richmond and the previously-unbeaten Adelaide Crows before scoring what could be one of the most famous wins in the club’s history, knocking off the heavily favoured Sydney Swans whom they hadn’t beaten since 2010, at a ground where they hadn’t won since 2008 and were beaten by 92 points in their previous visit, way back in Round 10, 2012.
Bookmakers had listed the Bulldogs at $6 to beat last year’s beaten grand finalists, despite the club coming off its impressive win over the Crows in addition to the Swans backing up from the arduous trip west, where they lost to Fremantle.
The Bulldogs appeared headed for a long afternoon when the Swans kicked the first two goals of the match, but Luke Beveridge’s pups would work their way back into the match and take the lead by quarter-time.
As expected, the Swans challenged, but the Bulldogs held their nerve to stay in front before briefly losing the lead midway through the final quarter. In the end, a mid-air goal kicked by Easton Wood on the goal-line, their only goal for the quarter, proved to be the difference as the club eventually prevailed by just four points.
The against-all-odds win came six days after they brutalised the red-hot Adelaide Crows under the roof at Etihad Stadium, and was their fourth from as many matches this season in which they started as outsiders.
Captain Bob Murphy labelled the win as being easily “one of the best wins in his home-and-away career”, and it’s these wins over heavyweight clubs that can build any team’s confidence and set them up for the rest of the season.
That being said, cast your mind way back to Round 7, 2012 when the Adelaide Crows, coming off their worst season in club history, thrashed reigning premiers the Geelong Cats at home then went on to narrowly miss out on a grand final berth.
Perhaps the Western Bulldogs, coming off four seasons without finals football and arguably its most tumultuous off-season since claiming the wooden spoon in 2003, could embark on a similar path.
The next five rounds will see the club take on St Kilda, Fremantle, Melbourne, the GWS Giants and Port Adelaide, with all but the games against the Dees and Power to be played at Etihad Stadium.
Given the impressive manner in which the Western Bulldogs has started this season, it’s possible the club could win at least three of those five, thus possessing a 7-3 record entering their Round 11 bye.
Who would have thought that to be possible given the events of the off-season in which they lost their coach, captain, CEO, a former Brownlow Medallist and over 800 games of experience at the end of season 2014?
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