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The Western Bulldogs have pullled off a big upset and knocked the West Coast Eagles out of the finals race, winning by 47 points at Domain Stadium on Thursday night.
» Click here to read the full match report
Final score
West Coast Eagles 7.10.52
Western Bulldogs 14.15.99
Finals are here! September kicks off in Perth as the West Coast Eagles host the Western Bulldogs at Domain Stadium. Join The Roar for live scores and a blog from 8:10pm (AEST).
It feels like the home-and-away season finished a lifetime ago, but at last we’re down to the most important month of the season.
West Coast will be looking to extend their excellent late season form into tonight’s qualifying final, and will start as strong favourites at home.
The Bulldogs have battled injuries, scoring troubles, and generally indifferent form in recent times and will be hoping for an upset.
Elimination finals like tonight often feel like a bit of a sideshow, fought out by teams almost certain to be also-rans.
But 2016 has been the kind of season where it feels like anything could happen, and while the loser’s season ends abruptly, the winner will remain a significant premiership chance.
Tonight’s victor will play next week in Melbourne against either Hawthorn or Geelong, and should they get up they’ll then travel to Sydney to play one of the Swans or Giants in a preliminary final.
It’s a difficult path to the grand final, certainly, but not an impossible one for either team.
If the Dogs can get through tonight’s game, they’ll feel pretty confident about their chances back on the eastern side of Australia.
And West Coast have shown in recent weeks that beating finals sides interstate – which seemed beyond them in the first half of the year – is now no obstacle.
This is an elimination final with serious premiership aspirations on the line.
At selection, the Eagles have made just the one change from their impressive performance against the Crows, with Mitch Brown replacing the injured Lewis Jetta.
The Bulldogs on the other hand have made no less than five changes from the team that lost to Fremantle at this ground. Easton Wood, Jake Stringer, Jordan Roughead, Jack Macrae and Tom Liberatore make up a very impressive batch of inclusions.
However, there has to be a question mark over the match fitness and form of some of these players. Easton Wood in particular seems like a quick return.
The Bulldogs’ gameplan is built on control, and it seems as though they’re losing a bit of that late in the year.
But there’s plenty of quality and inspiration in their young team, and they’ll be hoping for matchwinning performances from the likes of Marcus Bontempelli and Jake Stringer, while their small army of half-back flankers maintains possession and denies West Coast scoring opportunity.
The Eagles’ lineup looks much more settled and consistent, and has been playing at or around its best for a while now.
Two weeks ago against Adelaide we saw that vaunted defence back to its best, as they neutered the league’s most effective attacking team.
This is something of a different challenge for West Coast: their opponents tonight don’t rely on kicking 15+ goals to win games, so stopping their run and drying up attacking opportunities alone won’t be enough, although it will certainly help.
The home team do start tonight as overwhelming favourites, and rightly so. But there are some reasons for Bulldogs fans to stay optimistic: they looked well in control when these two sides met earlier in the year, albeit in Melbourne; they have no trouble playing the lock-down, low scoring style of football that West Coast may force on them; and with so many of their better players returning they should be somewhere near their best.
This has been a season for upsets, and the Bulldogs are more than capable of one tonight.
While the Eagles would gladly take any win from one to one hundred points, a comfortable victory tonight would further bolster their confidence that they can keep this late season run of form going even deeper into the finals, perhaps all the way to the end.
I’ll back West Coast to win and travel to Victoria next week full of confidence.
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