It's a bit like a kid counting down the days to Christmas, I’m counting down the days for the return of the 2020 AFL Premiership season.
Like most of you reading this, I have found it to be an arduous couple of months without the footy on the television. But that will change come Thursday night when Richmond and Collingwood kick off the reboot of the season.
For us Bulldog supporters however, we have been unfortunately condemned to having to wait until 6:05pm on a Sunday night to see our team make their return to football, when they play St. Kilda at Marvel Stadium.
In years gone by, I have always worked on doing match previews to help try and gauge what to expect on any given day. But for this week anyway, we’re going to change it up and have a look at some of the players that need to step up from the last time they stepped foot onto Marvel Stadium a couple of months ago.
Besides, I’ve already touched on St. Kilda in an article a couple of weeks ago when I was highlighting the first month of the Bulldogs’ restart to 2020. There, you can read about how the Saints, with all the bells and whistles they recruited in the off-season last year, were 31 points ahead against North Melbourne, only to completely throw it away in the second half.
As mediocre as the Saints are as an entity and as dismal as their second half effort was, I still expect them to come out firing on Sunday night, as they have everything to play for. They have a healthy list, with literally no injuries to speak of since the break. There are no excuses for a four-quarter effort on their end and being 0-2 would be the last thing they need going into a new era for their club.
As for the Doggies, there are a few players that have already been ruled out. Lachie Hunter will start serving his suspension, Taylor Duryea has been ruled out with a groin injury and Aaron Naughton is still fighting troubles with his knee - which will exclude him from the following list five, because there is still doubt on his availability. But make no mistake, he needs to make amends for being in Darcy Moore’s pocket in round one.
So with that in mind, here are the five players that I think need to atone for their poor round one performances and these five players are ones that I am confident can turn it around come Sunday night in what is a must-win game.
5. Bailey Dale
After a dream run in 2019 that saw him kick 20 goals in a span of six games, Bailey Dale’s 2019 ended with seven disposals in the Dogs’ capitulation against the Giants and his 2020 start with just six disposals and virtually being unsighted against the Pies. To be honest, I wasn’t aware that he was playing until the TV saw him among the team trudge off the Marvel Stadium turf, he was that quiet.
So that’s just 13 disposals and one behind in his last two games. Another quiet game will surely have questions raised about his consistency, which has been somewhat of an issue itself. 10 games in a 2018 season that was plagued with injury after showing promise in 2017, playing 16 games in return for 17 goals. He’ll look forward to playing against the Saints if he’s picked, he kicked a bag of five last time they played. I’d wager he’d lean to that game to get some form of confidence back, because he showed last year, that when he’s on, Bailey Dale is a hard man to beat.
4. Josh Dunkley
I love Josh Dunkley, he has a no-nonsense approach to attacking contests. If he sees the football, he goes after it. If he sees the opposition with the footy, he goes after them. He attacks and doesn’t exactly have a stop button. Last year was a banner year for Dunkley, averaging 28.3 disposals and 6.1 tackles in a year that saw him just miss out on an All-Australian. Fair to say the young man has broke out right?
Round one against the Pies saw his influence on the game limited to just 18 disposals and two tackles. Obviously the two tackles isn’t a good enough stat line for a player that does thrive on harassing opposition players. Also, when you consider that he managed to get 25 disposals or more in 15 games last year, getting 18 disposals isn’t exactly a good output from someone that we all know can do better.
And just for anyone that thinks that the shortened quarters is a relevant argue to the cause, Chris Mayne got 29 disposals in the same game and another four Pies had 25 disposals or more. It’s got some validity, but not enough for this case.
3. Tim English
I remember writing about in the prelude to the Collingwood game, that we will get a better gauge of where Tim English is at in terms of standing in the pecking order of the league’s best ruckmen. As we excruciatingly found out in round one against Brodie Grundy, the young man still has a ways to go to break into the elite echelon of rucks. He was beaten and victimized by one of the best big men in the league today, and whilst his second half was a little better, the damage was already done in the first half.
That’s not me saying that he won’t get there, I just think there is still plenty of room for him to develop into the player that many believe he can be - the kid is still only 22 years of age. His 2019 can almost be considered a breakout campaign, he played 20 of a possible 23 games and averaged some decent numbers - 13.2 disposals, four marks, 3.4 tackles and two clearances per game. He is still emerging and will probably take another season or two to fully break out.
Having said that, I am very keen to see how he goes head to head with another emerging ruckman in Rowan Marshall this weekend, these two played a very good ruck battle in the last meeting and dare I say, it won’t be the last exciting ruck battle these two have.
2. Sam Lloyd
The Sam Lloyd I saw round one, was not the same person I saw in 2019. What I saw in 2019 was a man was consistently productive, made very few mistakes and whilst sometimes he was seen as a bit hungry for the goals, I think that was something the Dogs needed, because they had struggled to find the big sticks in the past couple of years and I like it when someone tries to take it upon himself to kick the goal.
However, Sam Lloyd against Collingwood looked someone that was visibly defeated and low on confidence - go and see him dropping that easy mark before half time of that game to see what I mean. Everyone has their bad days, Lloyd’s game against Pies looked seemingly to be just one of those games. Any time he touched the footy, it turned into complete chaos for the worse of his side. But, this is a guy that kicked a goal in 20 of his 23 games last year and never went below 10 disposals in any game.
I expect him to bounce back this weekend, and I think he will bounce back this weekend - he’s been a very handy recruit thus far not to bounce back.
1. Marcus Bontempelli
It’s probably the most obvious point. The Bulldogs lost the match on every line. However, the midfield was arguably the root cause. I mentioned Dunkley earlier, but the power of the midfield starts with the captain, and the captain was tucked away in the back pocket of Taylor Adams for most of the night. The Bont needs to be better, much better than he was in round one. He only had 15 disposals and almost half of them were labelled as clangers. He wasn’t the worst player on the ground, but it was still a horrendous showing by his standards.
I don’t need to go into how great the Bont is and what he can do - everyone knows about that. But I need to stress the fact that it is now two games in a row that he has been targeted by clubs that will be thereabouts in 2020. GWS did it in the Elimination Final last year and he had only 13 disposals and the Pies did it in round one. The first thing St. Kilda should be looking at is how they can stop the Bont and they will use the Dogs’ last two games as inspiration for it.
I can only hope that Luke Beveridge and the boys have used this time to figure out what they can do to try and combat this method, because it could be in danger of being a recurring theme if the Saints get their way with the Bont on Sunday night.