Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has lauded his team’s dominant 88-point thumping of the Giants that his counterpart Adam Kingsley conceded was their worst display in his three-year tenure.
A sizzling six-goals-to-one opening quarter set up the landslide victory against a sloppy Greater Western Sydney, who lost Toby Greene, Josh Kelly and Jack Buckley from last week’s comeback win over Sydney, but had plenty enough talent to perform better than they did.
Making matters worse for the Giants, reigning Coleman medallist Jesse Hogan struggled with a foot injury throughout the match and is in doubt for next week’s clash with North Melbourne.
The Bulldogs had 37 scoring shots to GWS’s 14, in a go-to-whoa thrashing that spiked their already-mighty percentage to 137.3, which trails only Adelaide’s 146.
Twin towers Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy feasted with five goals apiece – after combining for 13 last week – while skipper Marcus Bontempelli (27 disposals) and Tom Liberatore (26) excelled in the midfield and ruckman Tim English starred in the ruck and helped kick-start the demolition with two first-quarter goals.
“[There was] absolutely nothing to be unhappy about tonight,” Beveridge said after his 250th game in charge.
“I think we’ve been pretty honest [this year]. Our players keep fronting up and giving their all. We understand the criticism around not necessarily being able to eke our way further up the ladder and beat some teams above us – we’ve just got to own up to all of that.
“Tonight was another one that the application was there, right across the 23 players, and obviously, a terrific start, but the cold, hard facts say that we need to keep winning, so it’s one down and then a handful to go.”
The Dogs provisionally leapfrog Gold Coast to move into eighth spot ahead of the Suns hosting Richmond on Saturday afternoon. They end the season against Melbourne (MCG), West Coast (Marvel Stadium) and Fremantle (Marvel Stadium).
Beveridge bemoaned the Dogs’ inconsistent defensive effort in their narrow loss to Adelaide three weeks ago, but they poured the pressure on the Giants from the outset and had five goals off turnover by quarter-time.
“Our back six or seven have been beaten up a bit with the critique of them and the emerging players, and the evolution of that line alone,” he said.
“But, we all take ownership of that because ultimately, you need your midfield group and your forward group to contribute to your defensive system, and I think everyone stepped that up a little bit.
“There are some levers we’re pulling to make sure we tighten it up a bit. Some of that’s simply decision-making off-ball, and how much we value that phase of the game, and I think tonight, we were pretty good at it … to keep a pretty threatening forward line to that score [44 points], but also to limit our exposure there.”
The Bulldogs improved to 2-8 against the current top eight, although both wins were over GWS, including a 32-point win in Canberra in round seven.
But their record is not as bad as it reads, given six of those losses were by 16 points or fewer, and the other two were by 21 and 22.
There was a seven-minute stretch in the second term when the Dogs kicked three goals and won 32 disposals without the Giants touching the Sherrin.
Thirteen GWS players, including Jesse Hogan, Sam Taylor, ex-Dog Jake Stringer and Aaron Cadman, had won four disposals or fewer midway through that quarter in an insipid display not befitting a team with premiership aspirations.
The Giants’ percentage sunk from 118.4 pre-match to 113 after a match they lost the contested possession battle by 51 and ended a six-match winning streak.
“We got belted in the contest, plain and simple. I think maybe minus-51 in the end, and you can’t really compete when you’re getting belted like that,” Kingsley said.
“You’re always trying [to turn things around]. Problem is, it’s never one thing that’s the issue while you’re losing contest – it’s usually a handful, if not more, and you’re trying to sort of feed that into the players, and we were just off tonight. I don’t know why.
“The Bulldogs are clearly playing for their season, and it just felt like we weren’t, and so that’s disappointing, from our perspective.
“Obviously, they were really strong, and they’ve been like that against us in the past, for a number of times that we’ve played them. They’re a bit of a hump that we haven’t been able to get over in the last couple of years.”
Kingsley said they would “move on quickly” from the Dogs defeat and had the chance to respond against the Kangaroos, but there is no certainty that star spearhead Hogan would play.
“Hogan’s a bit sore with his foot. He couldn’t really move around throughout the game,” he said.
“We thought it’d be a little bit better than that, but he got a little bit of a knock early in the game, when he tried to launch, and it sort of flared up a little bit for him. He did his best to manage that, but it was a pretty tough night for him from a pain perspective.”
Toby McMullin was subbed out in the second quarter with a suspected ankle syndesmosis injury.
Final score: Western Bulldogs 19.18 (132) def GWS Giants 6.8 (44)