Bulldogs vs Bombers Review

New from Ari Aster - The Vanishing

🩸 “A haunting study in absence. Rarely has a team disappeared so completely while technically still being on the field.”

🩸 “A spiritual sequel to ‘Session 2019.’ Aster once again explores a cursed legacy passed through generations…

Warning.

Unfortunately, while the title is fiction, what followed was anything but. So if horror isn’t your genre, I wouldn’t blame you if you stop reading here.

Act one.

While Essendon’s recent run of form has looked promising on the surface, particularly against moderate opposition, there have been persistent warning signs in key areas of the game, signs I’ve written about over the past few weeks. Those areas have largely been covered up elsewhere, but what we saw this week was those weaknesses coming to the fore. And once they were exposed, it was only natural that they’d start to affect the parts of the game that had been holding things together.

Since Round 5, the area between the arcs has been Essendon’s biggest problem. The core issue? Stoppage work. Whether it’s winning the initial contest to get first hands and feed the outside runners, or halting the opposition from doing the same, the midfield simply hasn’t held up.

Starting against Melbourne and leading into this game, Essendon was -35 in contested possessions pre-clearance, that’s the zone inside the immediate area of stoppages, with the groundball the first stage.

In that same time, the Bombers were -8 in groundball gets inside that zone, which is where the clearance problems have started.

In the last five games, Essendon had only won the clearance count once, against West Coast, while losing it to both North Melbourne and Collingwood, who are both ranked inside the top seven in this metric.

While Essendon came into this game ranked 6th overall, they hadn’t faced any of the top four: Gold Coast, Carlton, Brisbane, and the Western Bulldogs. The advantage those teams have in clearance? Winning the contest pre-clearance. Carlton, Brisbane, and the Bulldogs are three of the top four. Essendon? 16th.

These teams are getting first hands on the ball, but how often are they actually turning that into a clearance? If you watched the second half against Sydney, it was obvious why they’re the number one team in that area. The Bulldogs sat 5th.

So leading into this game, there were serious concerns any time the game slowed down and became stoppage-based.

The one positive across the last five games? Despite all of it, the issues hadn’t been felt on the scoreboard, at least, not directly.

Since Round 5, Essendon had been the number one team in defending scores from opposition clearances, conceding an average of just 25 points from that source. That’s a huge effort, and the defenders’ work behind the ball shouldn’t be overlooked, not just holding up under pressure, but winning it back and rebounding from it.

Starting with the win over Melbourne, the Bombers have conceded an average of 52.8 inside 50s per game, losing the count in all five matches while averaging just 42.8 entries themselves, only having more inside 50s than their opponents twice this year, the only times they’ve gone over 50 in a game.

But while the defensive unit has battled manfully, how long could they keep repelling, and still turn defence into offence efficiently?

If you win the ball at stoppage, your first preference is to transfer that onto the scoreboard. The worst-case scenario? You defend the territory you just won by keeping it in your half of the ground and making it difficult for the opposition to escape cleanly. The flow-on effect? Giving yourself another scoring option, and the more important one.

Quote taken from my Bulldogs vs Bombers Preview

“We saw just three weeks ago what elite teams like Collingwood do once they win territory.

The Magpies dominated time in forward half,

suffocating Essendon’s exits and feeding their intercept game. The Bulldogs pose a similar threat.

They rank 3rd for time in forward half across the season, and number one over the past five games. The payoff? An average of 46.8 points from forward-half chains, ranking second in the league.”

Up until Round 10, Essendon had been conceding 38 points per game from possession chains starting in their back half, just above the AFL average, ranked 10th. Considering how many inside 50s they’ve given up this year, that’s an impressive return from an improving defensive unit. But it’s a long way to go when they’re trying to transition from so far from their own goal.

The Bombers came into this game turning just under 29% of their back-half possession chains into forward 50 entries, ranked 14th. It gets harder again when starting from defensive 50, where they’ve managed just over 19%, with only Richmond converting at a lower rate.

Not only is it harder to score moving it that far, but when you’re trying to generate offence from so deep, it becomes harder to defend scores going back the other way off your own turnovers.

In the previous five games, Essendon had given up just under 11 shots at goal per game from turnovers, only the Bulldogs, Collingwood and Fremantle had averaged less. Even more telling, of the 67.4 turnovers they averaged in that stretch, only 16.6% turned into opposition shots, the lowest rate in the league. More credit

to the defenders who carried much of that load.

But how well were the best teams punishing turnovers? Since Round 5, five of the top eight teams on the ladder were also the highest-scoring sides from turnover. The Bulldogs ranked 6th in that area, averaging 50.2 points a game.

So how long could Essendon afford to lose territory at stoppage, defend opposition entries, rely on the backline to win it back, transition the ball from so deep, avoid turnovers, and then defend the ones they did make?

With the back story set, now comes act two.

This is where the horror really begins.

Act two.

Essendon knows the strength and scoring power the Dogs possess at the source and throws its best punch: Setterfield, Caldwell, Durham and Merrett at the coalface, El Hawli and Duursma on the wings, and Martin starting at half forward but working up to be an extra around the ball. It was effective early against Sydney and rightly backed in again. But the Bulldogs are a different beast. They’re a side with their game in order, strong at the contest, experienced, and clean. First they win the hardball, then they feed the outside.

The Bulldogs win pre-clearance groundball 29–21. Essendon actually wins first possession four more times, but turns it into an effective clearance just 67.6% of the time. The Dogs, on the other hand, go at over 83% from first possession to effective clearance. And once the ball gets out, Essendon can’t lay a glove on them, just 19 effective tackles in a first half that was a massacre.

Few teams punish a lack of pressure like the Bulldogs, and next in line were the defenders.

Once Liberatore, Kennedy, Bontempelli, Sanders and English win it inside, it’s straight out to Dale, Richards, Harmes, Freijah and Johannisen.

Coming in, Essendon and the Bulldogs were ranked one and two for handball receives, uncontested possessions from a teammate’s handball, with Essendon averaging just over 142 per game. But when Essendon wins the ball at stoppages, handballs go to teammates who are flat-footed and stationary, effectively just passing the pressure onto someone in no position to receive. The Bulldogs, on the other hand, face no resistance on the inside and nothing extra on the outside, allowing them to link up with 213 handball receives, and going to players in full motion, front facing their own goal.

Now the ground has opened up around them, and the defenders need to win the ball back…or just hold up at a minimum.

After their first nine games, Essendon was the fourth-best team at winning contests outside of clearance, behind three teams inside the top five on the ladder. But the issue was, it was the defenders holding up the numbers, off the back of what was unfolding ahead of them.

Reid, McKay and Ridley in the air were joined by McGrath, Roberts and Prior at ground level, forced to repel the initial opposition entry inside 50 and turn it into attack. Try as they might, nobody would be up to the challenge this week.

The Western Bulldogs go inside 50 on 61 occasions, the same as Sydney last week. Since the start of 2024, only Port Adelaide in Round 4 and Brisbane in Round 24 last year have gone in more against Essendon. And while the defenders were able to hold off the scoring that came from the Bulldogs’ clearance wins, the job of rebounding that volume was too much. This is where the loss in territory from stoppages starts to show.

Up until three-quarter time, 10 of the 15 shots at goal the Bulldogs create from turnovers come from Essendon’s back half, either through poor skills on exit or relentless pressure from Dogs forwards and midfielders. By the end of the game, they convert over 34% of Essendon’s turnovers into shots at goal, a rate that would be clearly number one across the season.

When Essendon finally breaks through the Bulldogs’ defensive layers, the toll of having to defend for so long makes it too hard to turn into scoreboard impact.

They transition just over 22% of chains from the back third into the front third, above their season average of 19.1%, but only turn just over 4% into a scoring shot. That would rank a clear 18th in the competition. Not the case for the Bulldogs, who transition over 38% of their chains from defensive 50 to forward 50, almost 10% above their season average, which was already ranked number one.

All up, Essendon conceded 24 shots at goal from their own back half, via a mix of stoppages and turnovers, the most they’ve allowed in a game under Brad Scott. I don’t think they expected to be exposed in quite this way, but they would’ve known that this vulnerability was bound to surface eventually.

Short sharp notes.

After a slow start to the year, the Bombers have been improving their intercept game. Coming into this week, they were intercepting the opposition every 5.48 possessions, the eighth-best rate, but in this game, that rate was 8.47, their worst in the last 32 games.

This week, the Bulldogs took 99 uncontested marks. Since the start of 2024, on the nine occasions when they have taken 99 or more, they have won all nine games, with winning margins of 71, 91, 96, 17, 67, 91, 60, 76, and 48 points, at an average winning margin of 68.5.

Essendon was conceding just over 14 groundball wins in defensive 50 per game across the first nine rounds. The Bulldogs won 28.

Act three.

Unfortunately, everything you’ve just read is a true story. I could’ve gone even deeper, but everyone lived through it at the time, and no one’s lining up to relive the mess in even greater detail.

As you’ve seen, I’ve focused my review on the growing concern around stoppages in recent weeks. Other areas of the game have been moving in the right direction, but while clearance numbers don’t immediately look disastrous on paper, it was only a matter of time before the issue bled into those areas that had been improving.

There’s no such thing, in my view, as “moving on and putting it behind you.” That’s not acknowledgment of what went wrong, nor an opportunity to accept, address, and actually work on fixing it.

They’ll get another chance in eight games’ time to redeem themselves and show what they’ve learned from this experience. Nobody wants a sequel to this movie.