Bulldogs' Bark To Be Heard Again
The Age
Saturday September 13, 2008
THE Bulldogs have now achieved something and nothing. Victory last night ensured they would not be the Hollowmen as Rodney Eade feared. They have averted that peculiar misery of exiting the season in the most regretful way for a double-chance finalist.
They now enter the preliminary final for the first time since 1998. A decade since the crowning achievement being a penultimate final. It was appropriate then that a cheeky opening riff of AC/DC's Long Way To The Top barked out mistakenly ahead of the national anthem. For the Dogs it might be something of an anthem.They are not at the top, they are some way from it, but inching closer. The season now at least has a finals win to cling to and so has delivered some substance to a year of hope.Last night in victory there was a palpable sense of relief. Defeat would have meant so much more than victory. Which is not to belittle the victory but the humbling by Hawthorn last week. Sydney in that context was the exact opponent for the occasion. A side wishing to express its grit would find ready opportunity with Sydney's hunter-gatherer game plan.In the event the Dogs out-Sydneyed Sydney. They won the tackles, the clearances, the contested possessions. And the game.Where last week they were wanting this week they were demanding. Matthew Boyd and Ryan Griffen were superb through the middle doing the dirty work in the packs and in Griffen's case gliding about with the ball. His goal in the third term sweeping up the wing running away from Jarrad McVeigh to take three bounces and goal was a wonderfully deserving moment of triumph.It was not the triumphant Dogs moment. That happened minutes earlier when Brian Lake ran away from Barry Hall to goal from 50 and put the Dogs four goals clear and charging.To that point Hall had bettered Lake in every individual contest, so the defender's goal illustrated how he had salvaged something of his night along with his side's.The match turned in that third quarter and it was Josh Hill who did a little of the turning.Poor to the point of being a bewildering tactical decision to still be on the ground after the main break, Hill kicked the first two goals of the third and rewarded the faith.The Dogs have rarely struggled to score - save for last week when they struggled to do anything - but they began the game with nary a tall in the forward line. They went deliberately short and sought to use their lack of height to their advantage.But they did not play accordingly in the first half. Their first entries were crude lobs to the forward line which played to Sydney's advantage. With Tadhg Kennelly allowed to play high at half-back he rebounded everything in the first term.Gradually, and admittedly the rotation of the ruckmen forward helped, the Dogs began playing smarter.The small forwards used their pace to hunt the ball when it hit the ground, their pressure starving Sydney of options and denying it its rebound.Shaun Higgins' goal at the start of the second quarter typified this doggedness from the Dogs.The snap came about from a handful of successive tackles which forced the ball to be coughed up.Where defeat might have left a hollowness to the season, victory and more importantly the manner in which it was achieved - a style that Geelong has been troubled by - has at least restored hope.
© 2008 The Age