The Western Bulldogs have come away from their Saturday night meeting with the North Melbourne Kangaroos with a 14-point win in a low-scoring game.
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In short, the Dogs were more disciplined and better organised tonight. While they lost the clearances and broke even in contested possessions, their defensive setup made it impossible for the Roos to get any sort of offensive run going.
Even when the Roos were able to force a turnover and try to counterattack, the Dogs ran hard to defend and usually managed to shut it down.
The result was a combination of an impressive, coordinated team defensive effort by the Dogs, and the Roos’ complete inability to find a plan to get through it.
North’s strategy, such as it was, appeared to be to try and control possession, chipping short and wide at every opportunity.
Presumably this had more to do with lack of options than anything else, but whatever the cause North simply couldn’t create a significant number of scoring opportunities, and consequently finished with just seven goals for the match.
After falling behind by 26 points early in the final quarter, North rallied briefly to get within striking distance in the last few minutes, but in truth they never looked likely to score multiple goals in a short space of time, and had that game been played for any length of time that would have been the case.
They just simply didn’t have the damaging players needed to put the Dogs under serious pressure.
This result leaves them pretty much destined for a mediocre 8th finish, and it’s hard to imagine them turning this result around should they meet the Dogs again in the first week of the finals.
The Bulldogs may have higher aspirations, sitting outside the top four by just one game plus percentage, with a favourable looking draw to come.
Final score
Western Bulldogs 9.7.61
North Melbourne 7.5.47
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