The first 12 months of Brendan McCartney’s coaching tenure at the Western Bulldogs has been productive - learning the terrain at the Club, discovering the abilities of his players and unearthing some gems along the way.
Finding his footing as senior coach, he made some major inroads in the first half of the season before his young troops began to tire and struggle with the demands of senior footy.
“The first half of the year, [we were] very progressive, second half of the year [we] struggled to deal with our opposition and the demands of the game on a young group and a big injury list,” McCartney told SEN radio.
“I think a lot of weeks they [younger players] are compromised, probably because they are just not recovering from the previous weeks and it is usually a culmination of them playing against men that are four or five years older, which is equating to six or seven extra pre-seasons.”
Yet with his second pre-season at the helm about to start, McCartney is more buoyed than ever, armed with a deeper understanding of the players at his disposal and a philosophy that will really start to come into effect in the next few weeks.
“Each time you see a player play there is something in their game that you think gee… I didn’t realise they had that in their arsenal but at the same time we have got to work on that and get them probably to be able to fit the team better and also to know our club and how it operates and the staff,” he said.
“We have had some ups and downs but we are well placed to really jump into next pre-season.”
The season gone by saw eight Bulldogs players make their AFL debut as well as giving rookie elevation Mark Austin the opportunity to play his first game in Club colours.
Of those nine players, five were given an extended run in the seniors playing at least five games, while the remaining young pups all ran out with the team on multiple occasions.
If you extend that further, 47.72% of the Bulldogs starting 22 had played less than 50 games on average for the year - while almost 25% of the starting line-up was made up of first and second year players alone.
While the aftermath of that resulted in a fade out in performances late in the season, a number of the young players will greatly benefit from the fast tracking in their development.
Injuries to key defenders Dale Morris and Tom Williams provided one such example with the emergence of Mark Austin, Michael Talia, Jordan Roughead and Fletcher Roberts in the back six throughout the year.
“[Morris] has been incredibly important - we know there is going to be some adjustment but what we were able to find through that this year was we may have found a couple of young, tall defenders that are going to help take us forward too which is really important for the Club,” McCartney said.
Another positive for the future development of young Bulldogs players is the announcement earlier today that the Dogs will field a stand-alone VFL side from 2014 onwards, with the full support of McCartney.
“We’ve worked through some issues this year and we are ready to go forward with a stand-alone team in 2014 which will be terrific for us,” he said.
The independent VFL side will be advantageous in the development of the emerging Bulldogs playing group allowing the team to play to similar structures and game plans as the senior team.
