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Following the twilight game last Sunday to complete the seventeenth round of the AFL, I expected to see far more experts come out and unequivocally write off the Western Bulldogs as a challenger for the premiership.
Some have hinted at it by elevating Hawthorn to the status of “natural challenger” (to Geelong, in case you were wondering), while others have made fleeting references to their final seven games last season in which they lost six by an average of some 45 points.
But I can’t recall seeing anyone come out and announce that the Bullies were a spent force.
Just to recap, on Sunday evening (the stars would have only just emerged from beyond the Dome’s roof), Carlton came back from a 37 point deficit from midway through the third quarter to pretty much bury the Bullies by 28 points.
Carlton booted the last nine goals of the match.
This also signalled the third week running that the Bullies failed to reach 100 points, having done so in thirteen of their previous fourteen games.
Many will be reluctant to be so bold as to dismiss the Bullies, because in all honesty, winning thirteen of your first fifteen games (along with a draw) is right up there with the very best opening fifteen games of the past twenty years.
Essendon won a straight fifteen on the way to winning its first twenty games of the 2000 season, and Carlton also won thirteen of its opening fifteen games in 1995, on the way to winning twenty home and away games by season’s end.
And of course, there’s Geelong this year, now sitting well atop and in a seemingly impermeable position.
So there is a very good reason why pundits are willing to wait another week or two before exercising last rites.
Even in the absence of extreme pronouncements, one gets the impression that from day one there has been a nagging doubt about the authenticity of the 2008 version of the Bullies.
It might be because of the lack of a power forward, or a big name midfielder, or a general feeling that the season could go off the rails at any moment with the injury of one or two key players.
The fact that the Bullies are putting so much faith in a young Williams to hold down centre half-back, a recent convert from the rugby code who occasionally reminds us of his lack of nous and grounding in the game, is a big hint that their defence is operating on the thinnest of margins.
And that it can all come crashing down at a moment’s notice.
History tells us that this nagging doubt is justified.
Four preliminary finals losses all the way back to 1985, and little events during those seasons remind us that the Bullies have had a certain frailty when it comes to finals footy for a long time. And that isn’t about to disappear, no matter how many wins they managed to put together earlier in the season.
It’s worth noting that in the last sixteen seasons, the Bullies have made the finals on eight occasions for the atrocious record of four wins and eleven losses.
It’s impossible to conceive of any team having a worse finals record (when playing in the finals), and it makes Collingwood look like world-beaters (at least they occasionally make grand finals).
In 1985, having won sixteen of twenty-one games, Footscray lost its final game of the season to the bottom team St Kilda.
This was a team that was on its way to collecting four consecutive wooden spoons.
Not only that, of Footscray’s six losses for the season (it’s best season since 1961 by a long shot), four of the six losses were against the bottom four teams.
Quite simply, serious flag contenders don’t do that.
Footscray went on to lose the preliminary to Hawthorn.
In 1992, curiously enough, Geelong and Footscray topped the ladder with sixteen wins apiece and met in the qualifying final (of a then top six).
Early in the third quarter, Footscray had got away to a six goal lead, yet lost the match by a staggering 51 points!
To rub it in a bit, they met again in the Preliminary Final, and this time Geelong’s win exceeded ten goals.
Finals frailty.
Geelong was to have two further finals victories over Footscray in 1994 and 1995, the former a tight game in one of those meaningless matches from the McIntyre Top 8, the latter an 82 point shellacking.
Curiously, Geelong was to make the Grand Final in each of 1992, 1994 and 1995, and lose the lot. That bit of the story is most unlikely to repeat itself in 2008.
In 1997, Geelong and the Bullies finished second and third, respectively.
Despite the Bullies opening their finals campaign with a blistering win against the Swans, they were to experience the heartbreak of a tight preliminary final loss against Adelaide when the match appeared pretty much over at the ten minute mark of the last quarter with the Bullies looking home for all money.
But the warning bells were there during that year.
All of Fremantle, Adelaide and Brisbane won their first ever away game against the Bulldogs. Not only that, Port Adelaide won their first ever away win period.
And they did it having to come back from a 44 point deficit at quarter time.
Serious flag contenders don’t allow those sorts of things to happen.
The Bullies were involved in a similar turnaround the following season when they led West Coast eight goals to nil at quarter time and were absolutely flying.
The Eagles were in front by half time!
The Bullies weren’t to kick another goal till late in the third quarter. Once again, serious flag contenders don’t lose control of games from such positions of strength.
Which brings us back to Sunday afternoon.
Here’s a hypothetical: you’re a top two team with serious flag aspirations, you’re up by 37 points against a team that is not only outside of the eight, but has barely won a game in the last four seasons.
Could such a team really produce a 65 point turnaround, in all seriousness? Or maybe that bit about flag aspirations was ill-founded?
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