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The Western Bulldogs continued their trend on Saturday night, with another poor quarter costing them the game.
The Dogs went missing for the entire second quarter, after leading the bottom-of-the-ladder Lions by a goal at quarter time.
The fact the same trend is happening week-in week-out must be worrying for coach Brendan McCartney.
Nine players aged 25 or over played against Brisbane and none of them took ownership on-field during a second quarter in which the visitors kicked seven goals while the Bulldogs managed only two.
With Robert Murphy, Dale Morris, Matthew Boyd and Daniel Giansiracusa are all set to retire either at either this or next season’s end, now is the time to look to the future.
Tom Liberatore will be a gun, Mitch Wallis played his 50th game on the weekend and is slowly becoming the player they had hoped, Jack Macrae is still inconsistent, and then they drop off.
The Western Bulldogs need to be proactive and aggressive in the trade period. They possess some tantalising options to put up for trade bait. Shaun Higgins has a lot of potential but still is not reaching it. Tom Williams has had a rough run with injury.
Stewart Crameri has slotted in but is struggling as their number one forward. With another target up forward, Crameri will add more firepower and allow a less predictable approach into the forward line.
The idea of the team of the west without a key forward is nothing new. Chris Grant is the only genuine key forward I can recall in the past 15 years who has done anything of importance. The Barry Hall experiment was successful at the time but the are Dogs paying for that now, because they weren’t able to develop a power forward from scratch.
The Giants have three key targets that they may not require, the Bulldogs would be stupid to not attack that chance and try and get Jonathon Patton or Tom Boyd down to Whitten Oval.
In four years’ time, there will be holes across the board that will either need to be filled from the trade periods or development of the pups.
With memberships and crowd numbers falling, they are at a crossroad once again. The recruiters and list management team have everything riding on the next year or two and the draft selections they choose.
Have we heard the last yelp from the Western Bulldogs or will they be able to get their bark back? At least McCartney knows “there’s a lot of work to do”.
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