Heading into Marvel Stadium (then known as Etihad Stadium) on the afternoon of March 27 2016, most Western Bulldogs fans probably harboured a mix of two emotions – excitement and trepidation. They were about to witness the Dogs’ first match of a new season, following a year in which the club had been transformed from one of despair to one of dare.

Twelve months earlier, the Bulldogs had emerged from a tumultuous off-season with a new coach – Luke Beveridge – and a new captain, Bob Murphy. Under the combined leadership of ‘Bevo and Bob’, the Dogs had remodelled a dour team that struggled to win into one that played an attractive brand of footy, winning more games that it lost.

That transformation had taken the Dogs all the way to a heartbreaking loss against Adelaide in an elimination final.

Notwithstanding that painful exit, the Dogs appeared to be a team on the rise. But were they really? In the summer months ahead of the 2016 season, some football experts suggested that Luke Beveridge’s second year at the helm would be much tougher than his first. Coaches of other clubs will have “worked out” the Bulldogs’ new game style under Bevo, they theorised, and wins would be much harder to come by this time.

Such reservations were understandable, even amongst loyal Doggies fans, but would those concerns prove to be valid? The Dogs’ first match of 2016 would likely provide at least a partial answer to this. And it did, in the most emphatic of fashions – and within a single quarter.

On 2015 form, the Dogs’ opponents Fremantle would be anything but a pushover. In fact the Dockers had topped the ladder in the previous season before being eliminated from the premiership race in a preliminary final. Under four-time Grand Final coach Ross Lyon they were expected to remain a formidable force.

A good start from the Bulldogs would be an ideal way of settling the pre-season nerves of the Footscray faithful – and that’s exactly what they got. In fact it took only 21 seconds for the Dogs to offer a sample of what was to come in 2016 and which players would play vital roles.

At the opening bounce Jordan Roughead palmed the ball down to Tom Liberatore, whose kick found Marcus Bontempelli. Without breaking stride, he kicked inside forward 50, where the ball was gathered by Liam Picken. In a flash, Picken handballed straight back to a rampaging Bontempelli who dropped the ball onto his left foot as he crossed the 50-metre arc and watched it sail through the big sticks.

It was impossible to imagine a better start to a season – or a more accurate portent of what 2016 promised for the Western Bulldogs. All four players in that opening passage of play would be vital cogs for the Dogs as they charged towards one of the greatest premiership wins in footy history.

Of course Bulldogs fans could not have known that at the time and, just as one swallow does not make a summer, a single goal – no matter how impressive – does not make a quarter, or even a game, let alone an entire season.

What came next, however, would have excited even the most pessimistic of Doggies supporters. Within four minutes, Liberatore – playing his first game back after a year out with a torn ACL - added a goal of his own. By the 12-minute mark, Toby McLean and Jason Johannisen had added majors for the Dogs.

And by the time the quarter-time siren sounded, Josh Dunkley, Roughead and Jake Stringer had joined the goalkicking party. The Bulldogs had seven majors on the board. The Dockers – the reigning minor premiers – had none.

Despite being wasteful in front of goal, the Bulldogs dominated again in the second quarter, extending their 41-point quarter-time lead to 50 points at the long break. By that stage Fremantle had managed to kick only a single goal.

Unsurprisingly, the Dockers showed some fight in the third term and, with help from further inaccuracy from the Dogs, cut the margin back to 40 points at three-quarter time.

Fremantle added a further goal in the early moments of the final quarter, but the Bulldogs refocused and kicked the last five goals of the match – two to Stringer, one each to Jack Macrae and Caleb Daniel, and one to a new Bulldog recruit playing his first game in red, white and blue: a youngster by the name of Tom Boyd.

Six months later, Boyd – with the assistance of a game-defining tackle from Dale Morris – would produce the 2016 Grand Final’s iconic moment, kicking the goal that confirmed to Bulldogs fans that their 62-year premiership drought had at last been broken.

That journey to a Western Bulldogs premiership may have started in late 2014 with the captain/coach appointment of Bob Murphy and Luke Beveridge, but the Dogs’ opening round win over Fremantle in 2016 proved to be a symbolic signpost along the way.

Round 1, 2016
Western Bulldogs 15.13.103 d Fremantle 5.8.389

Goals: Stringer 5; Bontempelli, Liberatore, McLean, Johannisen, Dunkley, Roughead, Suckling, T Boyd, Macrae, Daniel
Best: Johannisen, Biggs, Murphy, Stringer, Liberatore, Macrae
Brownlow Medal votes: Jason Johannisen 3, Jake Stringer 2, Shane Biggs 1