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Whateley: The Dogs are wasting the prime years of their greatest ever
Gerard Whateley • August 25th, 2025 8:00 pm
Four days of footy absolutely stacked with snap judgments, and there will be none sharper than the Western Bulldogs… cast into a purgatory no team should have to endure.
Last night was the time to start crying into their beers.
Instead, they have this stay of execution waiting for Gold Coast to beat Essendon on Wednesday night to shovel the dirt on another disappointing campaign.
But snap judgments need not wait until Thursday morning.
This was the season to challenge for the top four… not miss the finals entirely.
There was a truth to what transpired yesterday.
The Dogs went 2-9 against the teams that mattered… those two wins against the Giants, who are weirdly their bunny.
The season was built pummeling the ill-equipped.
A 12-0 record against the have-nots with a percentage of 186.
It created the illusion that the Dogs were more than they are.
Yesterday ripped the pretence away.
If you hand-picked a scenario for finals qualification, you might very well have stumped for Fremantle at Marvel, so there are no alibis.
After a highly promising start came the second quarter… the time of reckoning.
They got sliced by the Docker’s aggressive ball movement from half back, got soundly beaten in the midfield and monstered by the big forwards.
All the fault lines opened up and swallowed them whole.
At times, you wondered what might have been running through Marcus Bontempelli’s mind… caught in this recurring nightmare.
In the four seasons since the 2021 Grand Final, they have twice missed September and twice bowed out in disappointing Elimination Finals.
They are wasting the prime years of their greatest player’s career.
There was adversity in this season, yet that wasn’t the period that defined them.
And there was a checklist that should have amounted to success.
Sam Darcy and Aaron Naughton combined for more than 100 goals… Ed Richards emerged as an elite running mate for Bont.
Tom Liberatore maintained his tireless standards, and Matthew Kennedy was an invaluable addition.
Bailey Dale was outstanding as ever, and Bailey Williams was terrific in his wing role.
How much more do you need to go right?
The fatal flaw was always defence.
Some of that is personnel, some of it is system.
If defence is an all-of-team responsibility, then the Bulldogs fail that measure.
As for the key posts, Liam Jones fell from fourth in the best and fairest to unselectable, and the coach gave up on Buku Khamis.
As good as Rory Lobb’s intercept game can be, he gets beaten too often.
Jedd Busslinger hasn’t played enough – just seven games in three years on the list.
James O’Donnell is making great strides, and Luke Cleary has a bit of substance.
But that unit was repeatedly shown to be deficient well before the monstering form of Treacy, Voss and Amiss yesterday.
Should they miss, the Bulldogs will have spent 12 of 24 weeks in the eighth. Six of those in eighth place, with a further 10 in ninth position.
That is their rightful place. Ninth.
14 wins and a percentage of 137 is hardly a fail, but it owes almost entirely to the two-speed economy.
The average losing margin was 14 points – not a disastrous gap but a defining disparity nonetheless.
So what does it mean?
If it’s not a wasted season – and I don’t really believe in wasted seasons – it’s a year in which the possibilities weren’t grasped and the deficiencies remain clear.
The Dogs aspire to be better… they expect to be better.
Yet somehow they aren’t, and it will again leave them feeling frustrated and disappointed.
The morning after their limp exit from last year’s final series, I felt as if Luke Beveridge’s next contract relied on a top-four finish… that could have been the handshake agreement.
But the paradigm changed.
He coached brilliantly through the early-season hardship and looked to have ushered in the next iteration of the Dogs.
Maybe he has, and we just have to wait a little longer.
Yet they are destined to miss the eight, and the foibles are so familiar.
Will it be different next year?
That’s the question that’s been on repeat at Whitten Oval for years.
They keep saying yes. But the answer keeps coming back no.
The quirk, of course, is if the Suns take the gas… the Bulldogs will play the Giants in an Elimination Final.
And they’ll win.
But that’s a tease too cruel to contemplate.
