Stephen Rielly | April 09, 2008
THE Western Bulldogs did to St Kilda last Friday night what only one other team had done to Ross Lyon's Saints.
Nick Riewoldt juggles his way through a skills session. Picture: Richard Cisar-Wright
They put 19 goals past them - 18 after quarter-time - with a splurge of scoring that, by game's end, had brought to mind images of an epicurean feast.
To that point it was Geelong alone, the premier and St Kilda's opponent this Saturday, which had managed to slice the Saints open in such a manner and that was in June last year, before Lyon's first-year fundamentals were completely understood and embraced by his players.
As the Bulldogs kicked 19.11 last Friday, so did the Cats last year who, of course, did much more to some very good sides by the end of their 2007 campaign. Go no further than Port Adelaide and the grand final.
The Bulldogs, it has to be said, are a particularly potent scoring outfit. In round one they put 19 goals by Adelaide, a granite-hard team to break down and one of the best defensive sides of the past five years.
The Dogs are prepared to concede in the belief that they will take more than they give up; a plunderer's philosophy scarcely expressed so capably since Malcolm Blight coached Geelong almost 20 years ago.
Those Cats held to a carefree approach which, essentially, was that if the opposition scored 15 goals, they would breezily score 20. With Gary Ablett senior in the goal-square, it wasn't an altogether unreasonable assumption.
On Friday night, too, the Dogs, down by 37 points at the first change, took risks they were not prepared to take before the game began.
Coach Rodney Eade did away with a loose man behind the ball, shifted the creative Robert Murphy from deep defence to attack and loaded up in the centre-square with his very best combination of Ryan Griffen, Adam Cooney, Daniel Cross, Scott West and Ben Hudson.
The turnaround was profound, and not just on the scoreboard. Not only did St Kilda's domination evaporate, its very competitiveness disappeared.
The art of winning the ball was stolen from it and then a backline without centre half-back Matt Maguire and the hardest defensive nut at Moorabbin, Steven Baker, gradually disintegrated.
The Bulldogs scored from three of every four forays they made into their forward 50-metre arc in the second term.
Critical contested possessions won between the two arcs, at first decisively in St Kilda's favour, saw the balance swing the Bulldogs' way by more than 10 per quarter after the first break.
It certainly appeared that Lyon chose not to shut the game down before the situation became critical.
Was there something to be learned about his side's overall progress by resisting the temptation to sandbag?
How good, for example, some of his younger players are when pitted one-on-one with an opponent instead of taking their place in a defensive formation of one kind or another?
Defence has been the bedrock of Lyon's game and this week no-one at Moorabbin has been able to avoid an uncomfortable question: was last Friday night simply the result of a team wandering momentarily from its path or the sign of a fundamental weakness emerging?
St Kilda captain and centre half-forward Nick Riewoldt acknowledged the question and its attendant doubts yesterday.
"Hopefully, it was an aberration. So far, we've played six games this year and three bad quarters of footy. So, to put it into perspective, hopefully it was an aberration," Riewoldt said. "Clearly we need to be a lot harder, need to win more contested ball.
"You can't expect to win games serving up what we served in the last three quarters on Friday night so that's what our focus is this week.
"(Geelong) is the benchmark of the competition, we've got nothing but total respect for them, but that being said we're confident going into this week we can match it with them.
"We've debriefed the game very thoroughly. We know what we've got to do, what we did wrong and we're looking forward to this week.
"It was unusual for us and not what we want to stand for. But it wasn't the defence's fault. It was the team's fault defensively.
"We know that and we've focused on that over the last couple of days."
Days that he and everyone else at Moorabbin have doubtlessly used to recall that the Bulldogs trailed by more than five goals against Collingwood at the MCG in round eight last year only to win by almost five.
The Magpies ran Geelong to within a kick in a preliminary final and the Bulldogs, brilliant as they were that night, finished the season 13th.