The Sunday graveyard shift has a very special place in my heart as a long time Fremantle supporter. I can’t begin to think of all the times I sat with the sun in my eyes at Optus Stadium at 3PM WA time, watching my beloved Dockers take on St Kilda or Gold Coast.
As a general rule, the last game on a Sunday is usually a couple of middling teams, the kind of game you can have on in the background while you’re meal prepping for the week or trying to finish up that pile of laundry you’ve been putting off for a fortnight (you know the one. The one that’s either on the chair in your bedroom or taking up residence in your spare room). But not so today as Melbourne visited the Bulldogs at Marvel stadium and put on a Sunday afternoon (or evening for the majority of viewers) thriller.
Two teams that from the moment the first siren blew wanted to move the ball fast and hit the scoreboard at a frenetic pace. Or at least I think they both wanted to move the ball fast from the outset. Kayo wasn’t showing the first two minutes of this game at all (More on that shortly). It may not have been quite as high scoring an affair as the game earlier in the day, but regardless both teams showed up to play and play they did.
A Kayo Conundrum
I know you’re all here to read about an absolutely belting game of football, but unfortunately I’m in the driver’s seat on this one and I have a soapbox to preach from first. I pay $46.99 a month for Kayo Sports for access to two streams because the AFL insists on Friday night double headers running simultaneously. If you want Foxtel instead for exclusively sports coverage it’ll run you closer to $60, and you don’t even get access to two screens for that price. This is all well and good if you’re somebody like me who tries to watch as much general sport as time allows, with the AFL even coming to you with no ads during play! Unless you count the advertising at the ground. Or on player guernseys. Or sponsored highlights like “C*les Goal” or “Bunnings Snag” or whatever they’re running now. It’s the only place you can catch every moment of football in the season, unless you count the grand final of course. Or the first two minutes of this particular clash.
Anyone could have seen that after GWS decided very rudely to pile on 500 goals during their game that there would be a scheduling clash with the next fixture. So why oh why did somebody that works at Fox sports not take a second to realise that some things needed to be moved around somewhere? Why did they not have any sort of plan in place for when these games might have potentially overlapped? Why does my stream consistently drop out during games? When I watch a day of test cricket I’m lucky to go a session without severe lag or dropping frames. For the amount of money the consumer is forced to shell out if they want to stay up to date with the sport they love this is just completely unacceptable.
Anyway, I’m happy to move onto the actual football now.
The Creator and His Monster
Luke Beveridge’s Bulldogs side has been absolutely wracked with injury, and in all the wrong places too. After today their injury list runs ten deep, including two players that are both key parts in their spine and also represented their entire primary ruck pool in Tim English and Sam Darcy. Despite this, Luke Beveridge still made the brave decision to swing the axe and drop three players on top of the two listed as injured. They went into this game with a banged up Bont, a rusty ruck in Rory Lobb and for a Luke Beveridge-coached side, a generally very short lineup all over the ground.
Luke Beveridge played Frankenstein, and this team was his monster. A hodgepodge selection, players out of position and playing through injury and on top of all of that an aggressive gameplan with every piece on the board in motion at any given moment.
And it worked.
The Dees may have won centre clearances pretty handily, but the dynamic defence of the Dogs made sure that was all for naught(on). Last week this was a team that looked slow, a team that lacked effort. Today was a whole different story. Run down tackles, plenty of ball won and despite being a team that won’t have been training to be in their current setup a very organised team defence, especially early in the game.
Despite Melbourne’s centre clearance dominance the midfield mix for the dogs combined for 125 touches and five goals, thanks especially to a dominant Ed Richards performance who managed 30 and three. The way this man moved the ball by foot- elite. 10 inside 50s and nine score involvements, and all that despite the fact that in every quarter bar one he got the majority of his touches in the back half. When this guy’s on he’s a great watch. It feels to me like Dogs supporters have been waiting for Ryley Sanders to really break out for a couple of years, and today he certainly managed to impress in a tight win. When the margin between victory and defeat is one kick, every single decision a player makes is important. To go at 83% while still managing 30 touches in such a hotly contested result is nothing short of elite, in this writer’s opinion at least.
I also want to touch on another young guy whose name has come across my desk recently. Marcus Bontempelli looked so very far from his best today, running through the game with heavy strapping on his knee. At times he looked reluctant to take kicks and put extra weight on the affected leg, looking for a handball target even when he was in space to take an unpressured kick at points. He couldn’t drive his legs through any tackles, he looked a couple of yards slower than he usually might and ultimately looked tired.
But that didn’t matter to The Bont.
He looked at his limitations and he used that beautiful brain of his to work things out. He found targets, he rested forward and he took a beautiful mark inside 50 early to set the tone. As he so often has through his illustrious career, he put his team in a winning position off his own boot, notching up three majors in the first half. I think that Max Gawn is the most dominant player I’ve ever seen, but Bontempelli is a close second for my money. He will go down as the single best player in history to not win a Brownlow medal (obviously excluding every great player who wasn’t a mid).
Rory Lobb had a really respectable game in the ruck for the Dogs, too. The move over from Freo wasn’t just transformative for his football, but it seems like he’s just a much more selfless person as well. He ran with Gawn most of the game and managed to keep his presence in the forward line to a minimum. No matter how selfless Lobb’s become, he’ll be very keen for English to come back into this side at the earliest possible opportunity.
It wasn’t just the mids that pulled through for the Dogs, though. For a team that has, charitably, a not great defensive unit to begin with coming up against one of the more dynamic teams in the comp right now, as well as missing arguably their most important back in Lobb, I was completely expecting a full blown shootout, but we didn’t quite get that. The backline played good fundamental football, happy to find the boundary and let their mids get back to work around the stoppage where they dominated all night.
Bailey Dale, in particular, had a great night out, notching a respectable seven intercepts and rebounding pretty well. He’s just a really solid player, he does his job week after week and I’d hope that he gets a lot of respect within the walls of the club. The player I really want to highlight here is Buku Khamis. The fringe Bulldog has only managed to bring up the 50 games up until now, but I thought (other than a couple of moments) he was great today. Again, he played his role fundamentally well, happy to affect a contest and not take a mark when a spoil was the percentage play. It was high quality and selfless football, which every team has need for. He didn’t take a break all night with 100% time on ground as well, showcasing his fitness. Hopefully for him this is the chance his career has needed.
The forward line was pumping too, and more importantly than that it was flexible. I was a huge fan of Naughton working up the ground despite realistically being the only tested key forward in the side, happy to be a part of getting the ball in quickly to advantage their smaller forward line. There was one particular moment that encapsulated this, with Naughton rolling around on the arc of 50 to hit up Rhylee West on the lead. Considering Naughton was just about paralysed a few weeks ago he’s putting together a very respectable season so far.
The smalls for the Dogs were exciting if not consistent, though that’s to be expected from the position. I’ve thought for a while that if Rhylee West was just 15 or 20 centimetres taller he would have been an excellent key forward with his natural toolkit, and when he lines up on a defender that’s around his height he proves this theory in my mind. A couple of goals and a couple out on the full, it was a decent enough day at the office for him. Somebody who I thought was a little more exciting, particularly for about 10 minutes in the second quarter, was Artie Jones. This kid is very exciting to watch when he gets going, and I think that having a good run at it will be great for him. He’s got very good hands, he’s very good at finding space and he’s got a wicked turn of pace about him that makes him a thrilling player at his best.
The only thing I’d lay at their doorstep after their win is that they never put Narrm away. This of course led to an electric final term, and of course they’ll be very happy to be going home with four points but I hope that when they get some cattle back they can start putting teams to the sword again, because what we’ve seen of this team at its best is absolutely incredible attacking football.
Desperate Dees
Melbourne have been playing excellent football this season. The move to Steven King has turned a group of players that over the last few seasons have been stodgy, slow and frankly boring into what I would say is the most watchable team in the comp. Based on the fact that the Dees supporters at Marvel seemed to just about outnumber Bulldogs supporters while being the loudest I can recall a Melbourne supporter base ever being I’d say they agree too. It was a really strong effort from the Dees today, and it seemed like victory was never out of reach for this team. They’re playing with confidence and swagger, led from the front by the most exciting player in the competition at the moment in Kozzy Pickett who was missing his exciting cousin on the field today, replaced by Caleb Windsor.
The Dees dominated centre clearance, particularly early, but they had a hard time converting from that. Kozzy and Gawn were still linking up beautifully through the middle but they struggled to translate that to stoppages around the ground. Kozzy Pickett was huge in the first defensively, he applied great pressure and put himself in the positions he needed to be in to help the Dees transition out of defence. Max Gawn, as expected, dominated hitouts against Lobb and Croft, while still gathering 18 touches and snapping a goal out of the contest so well it would have made Jeff Farmer proud. As I touched on earlier, Max Gawn is the most dominant player I’ve ever seen play the game and it’s great to see him continuing to evolve his game as both he and the game age.
I was also stoked with their backline, particularly with Daniel Turner. He’s now a lynchpin of their backline along with Jake Lever, and at 24 years old he’s just starting to hit the age that key position players come into their own. Eight intercepts, a couple of big contested marks and a goal for the young Demon made for a pretty decent day out. The other backman who impressed me was Jake Bowey. He’d be one of the more underrated players in this Melbourne setup, but if you watch him play every week you’ll see a young man who’s got that dog in him. He chases hard, he follows up with second and third efforts and he takes responsibility for launching the Dees at their fast best from kick in. He’s a solid lockdown defender too, he keeps up with some of the better smalls in the competition when he’s needed.
As an aside, Ed Langdon had a very good fourth quarter. If Melbourne went on to win he would have been the reason with his goal out the back of stoppage and his hard running through to the last. I personally love Ed Langdon, he’s a pure winger and a great team man.
Where the Bulldogs team defence was perhaps more impressive than their actual back six, the inverse was true for Narrm. The way they move the ball towards goal when they’re able to get their handball and short kick game going is just one of the great sights in the AFL in 2026. It also seems to have fostered a real spirit of selflessness among their forward line, players are very happy to give the ball off for the sake of the team. At almost all times during this clash Narrm were very happy to play their numbers ahead of the ball and trust their back six to do their job in order to rebound hard and fast. I love that this team didn’t look to take a backwards step at any point, and to me that speaks to a great culture about the place.
All things considered, I don’t think the Dees have lost any admiration for their loss today. As I’ve said in previous discussions about this club, they’re going to lose some of these winnable games but even when they do they’ll be a great watch. Except that Essendon game. But we don’t talk about that.
In Conclusion
This was a ripping game of footy. In fact, it might well have been in the top three this round.
I loved how the Bulldogs bounced back after last week, and I think that Luke Beveridge has really been proving his worth as a head coach with their current injury crisis. Even with their horrible injury luck they’re still very much a chance for top 10 come the pointy end of the season. Their new Frankenstein’s Monster approach to putting a makeshift team together is a great little by-story to follow for the season, seeing what magnets they move and when they move them. On the Bulldogs as well, it seems like Cody Weightman could be on for a return as early as their next game, a prospect I’m cautiously excited for. I’m sure ideally they’d give him managed minutes in the VFL, but if this does come off it’ll be an almost immeasurable boost for their side.
Melbourne are just so exciting right now, it can’t be overstated. Right now they are must watch television for me, and it’s a massive shame that they’ve got no standalone prime time games for the entire rest of the season.
Kayo sucks. Footy’s good.
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See you all next time.
