Some of the Western Bulldogs’ greatest late-season memories of the past 25 years have come in matches played at Marvel Stadium against Essendon.

For many, the greatest of them all came in the year 2000, the stadium’s inaugural year. The Dogs have had some much bigger wins late-season wins over the Bombers at the venue in terms of margin (11 points on that Friday night in 2000) since then, especially since Luke Beveridge took on the coaching role. They include an 87-point thrashing in August 2015, and a record-breaking 104-point win four years later, in which the Dogs kicked an incredible 21 goals without reply.

As great as those wins were, however, those old enough to remember the Bulldogs match against Essendon at what was then Colonial Stadium in the July 2000 are probably more likely to cite it as their favourite.

The game was played in the penultimate round of the home-and-away season, with the Dogs needing a win to guarantee a place in the finals. They came into the game in good form, having knocked off Collingwood a week earlier and broken a 13-game Carlton winning streak the week before that.

Essendon, though, was a challenge of an entirely different magnitude. The Bombers were on the verge of an achieving what many thought impossible – an undefeated 22-game home-and-away season. Only the Bulldogs and Collingwood stood between the Bombers and that goal.

The Western Bulldogs’ coach of the time, Terry Wallace, thrived on such challenges and, in the days leading up to the Round 21 clash with the undefeated Dons, set about convincing his players that they were the team that could ruin the Essendon dream.

But Wallace knew it would take more than psychology to knock off the Bombers – the Dogs would need to bring something different tactically to the table. Looking back on that challenge in an interview last year, Wallace explained how the week leading up to the big game unfolded:

The 2000 win against Essendon has been well documented over the years. In my document to the players there were 2 major headings: 1) Mission Possible and 2) The Night of Frustration.

I had been over to the NFL the summer before and worked with some defensive coaches at the Denver Broncos. We worked on a gridded zone defence for our game, but it was inconclusive whether it would work in our football with the size of the ground. The Bombers had been thrashing everyone, and we had some significant injuries, so on the Monday I went to the playing group [with a plan].

I said that no team was getting close to Essendon and asked if they were they prepared to try something completely different. Because we had had success in big games there was an element of trust in the group, and they agreed to go for it.

Perhaps riffing off the ‘Mission Possible’ angle, Wallace also introduced an element of subterfuge to the preparations:

We told the press we were having a quiet week and would only be doing light skills, obviously which the Bombers scouts were watching. We would then jump into our cars and drive down to the home ground of Werribee, our VFL affiliate at the time. The coaching staff had been down there and marked out the ground in zones or grids.

Our aim was to start with a seven-man backline regardless, and as soon as we lost possession of the ball all our mids were instructed not to pick up their men but retreat into our 14-man gridded zone defence.

Caught completely off guard by this previously unseen (in the AFL at least) tactic, the Bombers struggled to launch meaningful attacks, at times finding the gridded zone impenetrable. Frustration among the Essendon players mounted, something Wallace had banked on. That frustration boiled over into physical aggression at times, most notably when Bulldog Brad Johnson was felled by Bomber ruckman John Barnes. For Wallace, that meant his plan was working perfectly:

 I remember vividly the hit from Barnes on Johnno right on the half-time siren and the scuffle afterwards. I bolted onto the ground, and the players were seething. My reaction was to start with a big smile and chuckle and said to the boys, “What’s the problem?” We’d set the opposition up for ‘The Night of Frustration’ and they looked pretty frustrated to me!!!! 

As well as Wallace’s gridded zone defence had worked, the Bombers still took a 15-point lead into the three-quarter time break, and when Justin Blumfield marked and goaled for the Dons early in the final term, it blew out to 21 points.

But Wallace had one final lever to pull as part of his master plan:

To use a term from another famous sporting contest we had played ‘rope a dope’ all night. We had planned with our players that at some stage we would need to break the grid and go all-out attack, which meant things like moving Granty [Chris Grant] from loose man in defence to key forward for example.

The player’s job was to keep us close enough on the scoreboard so that we could pull the trigger. The opposition had done all the work all night attacking and trying to bust through the zone. Like Muhammad Ali we had sat back on the ropes (in the grid) all night and had done very little work

 If you ever listen to the commentary they did not get this or pick it up as they thought we were out on our feet. When the call came to the boys to attack they were very excited to get after them. The rest is history.

That history shows the Dons failing to score another goal for the rest of the match, while the Bulldogs piled on five. The penultimate of those will live forever in the memories of most Western Bulldogs fans. Chris Grant’s left-foot snap from the tightest of boundary line angles gave the Dogs the lead against the ‘unbeatable’ Bombers.

A post-siren goal from the 50-metre arc by Rohan Smith capped off a remarkable 11-point win, one that few believed possible. Wallace’s coaching effort was described as a masterclass, and his gridded defensive zone innovation was one of many he introduced in his time at the helm of the Western Bulldogs which became standard practice across the AFL over time.

The win guaranteed a place in the finals for the Doggies for a club record fourth consecutive season (a record since equalled by Luke Beveridge) but Essendon ultimately went on to win the 2000 premiership. However, thanks to Terry Wallace and his trusting band of Bulldogs, an undefeated AFL premiership season remains an unfulfilled dream for all clubs.

This Friday’s match will pit the Western Bulldogs against an Essendon team that might not be as strong as the Bomber juggernaut of 2000, but will keen to put up a better showing than its lasting outing against the Dogs only 10 weeks ago. That ended in a 91-point win for the Doggies, but Luke Beveridge and his charges will be steeling themselves for a stronger challenge from the Dons this time around.