To say that the Western Bulldogs’ off-season of 2014-15 was one of turbulence would be one of football’s greatest understatements. Since closing out the 2014 season with a heartbreaking loss to GWS, the club had lost its captain, coach and CEO under less-than-ideal circumstances.

Along with the departure of skipper Ryan Griffen to GWS, Adam Cooney to Essendon and Shaun Higgins to North Melbourne, the Dogs had lost Daniel Giansiracusa to retirement and, in the cruellest of blows, the heart and soul of the team Tom Liberatore to a season-ending knee injury in a practice match.

Throughout that summer the public, and especially the media, were circling Whitten Oval, eager to report on what they called a “club crisis”.

While it’s fair to say that from the outside, the view of the Bulldogs was not a pretty one, president Peter Gordon and his team were quietly putting into place a structure that would transform the Bulldogs into a league power. And it would happen far sooner than most believed possible.

Putting the unexpected departure of Griffen aside, Gordon set about turning the loss of the club captain into a net positive. He had witnessed the loss of many fine Bulldogs to other clubs in his youth – Quinlan, Round, Dempsey – and getting little in return. But he approached this flashpoint with a “not on my watch” attitude – and succeeded. 

Conceding the loss of Griffen to the Giants, Gordon did so only after receiving in return the number one pick in the 2013 AFL Draft, Tom Boyd. The 200cm key forward had played eight games in his first season at GWS and was widely touted as a future superstar.

Having secured Boyd’s signature, Gordon oversaw the appointment of a new coach – Luke Beveridge – and new captain. Leading the club on the field would be a player long considered the team’s spiritual leader, Bob Murphy.

Those leadership appointments and the recruitment of Boyd were largely seen as positive moves by the wider football community, but the “proof of the pudding” could only be found on the playing field.

After the tumult of the previous few months, everyone at Whitten Oval welcomed the day the 2015 AFL season finally arrived. The Bulldogs would open it with a home game against the West Coast Eagles.

The Eagles had jumped from 13th to ninth under first-year coach Adam Simpson in 2014 and were seen as a team on the rise (indeed they would make it all the way to the 2015 Grand Final), so this would be a tough first-up assignment for ‘Bevo’ and Bob’s Bulldogs.

While long-term expectations for the Dogs were relatively high, few forecast the team to take rapid strides, particularly after an off-season of such turmoil. But there was one person who believed the Bulldogs could move up the ladder quickly – coach Luke Beveridge. Bevo had said as much in his very first address to the player four months earlier.

Whether such speedy progress could be achieved could not be determined in a single match, but Bulldogs fans were hopeful of seeing at least some positive signs against the Eagles. They would get those positive signs in spades.

On this warm autumn evening, the Bulldogs made a slow start. In fact, by the 18-minute mark of the opening quarter, the Dogs had not registered a score – not even a single behind. West Coast had kicked two goals in that period, and led by 13 points.

It was not the start the Bulldogs had hoped for, but the deficit was at least manageable. Just before the clock ticked into time-on, a free kick and goal to Liam Picken sparked the Dogs, and the game suddenly transformed.

Picken’s goal was quickly followed by another to Jake Stringer, and after the Eagles kicked their third, the Bulldogs closed out the term with majors to Mitch Honeychurch and Luke Dahlhaus. After a very slow start, the Bulldogs went into the quarter-time huddle with a five-point lead.

Those who expected the Bulldogs bubble would burst before long seemed vindicated early in the second term. As they had in the first, the Dogs failed have a scoreboard impact in the first 15 minutes of the quarter, during which time West Coast added three goals, jumping out to a 15-point lead.

Once again, though, the Bulldogs bounced back, and quickly. Holding the Eagles scoreless for the remainder of the term, the Dogs added three goals through Easton Wood, Stringer and Jack Redpath. They took a lead into the long break, albeit a narrow one, with the scoreboard reading 7.5.47 to 7.1.43.

Incredibly, the third quarter was a near carbon copy of the first two. The Eagles added three goals in the first 10 minutes, while the Dogs failed to register a score. Then, as it had in the first two terms, one Bulldog goal triggered several more. The first of those went to second-year player Marcus Bontempelli, with Jason Johannisen backing up with two in succession.

Early in time-on Tory Dickson kicked his first to make it four in a row for the Dogs before the Eagles pegged one back to regain the lead at three-quarter time. The Bulldogs went into their final huddle with a score of 11.6.72, against West Coast’s remarkably accurate 12.2.74.

The Bulldogs managed to flip the script to start the final quarter, with Stringer kicking the first of the term to give the Bulldogs the lead. However, with goals to Jamie Cripps and Nic Naitanui, West Coast once again moved ahead, Naitanui’s major giving them a five-point lead.

Could the Bulldogs do once more what they had done in the first three quarters – respond to a strong West Coast challenge? The answer was an emphatic ‘yes’. Amazingly, Naitanui’s goal, which came at the eight-minute mark, was the Eagles final score of the match.

Fittingly, it was new recruit Tom Boyd who returned the Bulldogs to the lead, kicking truly after taking a strong mark. From there the Dogs dominated, only failing to put the result beyond doubt by missing some gettable goals. In the end, the Bulldogs won 14.13.97 to the Eagles 14.3.87.

In another fitting moment, the final siren sounded just as new skipper Bob Murphy was launching the ball out of defence, his kick quickly followed by a triumphant fist pump.

This was only one win, and the Bulldogs would have to back it up with more, but the way the Dogs won was significant. They combined attractive football with a hardness that saw them wrest back momentum having surrendered it four times.

What the Dogs had shown in the first game of 2015 was enough to convince triple-premiership winner Alastair Lynch and Brownlow Medallist Gerard Healy, who commentated the game for Fox Footy. They summarised the win in the game’s final moments:

Lynch: “It’s been an outstanding display by a young Western Bulldogs team. It’s had a horrific summer really.”

Healy: “What they did was to live what they showed two weeks ago [a 61-point thrashing of Collingwood in a pre-season match]. We wanted to know if that was real. Well now we know it’s real.”

It was indeed real. So real that, within 18 months, Beveridge, Bob and the entire Western Bulldogs team would get to hold the AFL premiership cup aloft.

Round 1, 2015

Western Bulldogs 14.13.97 d West Coast 14.3.87

Goals: Stringer 3; Johannisen, Dickson 2; Picken, Honeychurch, Dahlhaus, Wood, Redpath, Bontempelli, T. Boyd
Best: M. Boyd, Macrae, Bontempelli, Jong, Dahlhaus, Johannisen, Stringer
Brownlow Medal votes: Bontempelli 3, Jeremy McGovern (West Coast) 2, Lin Jong