Tam Hyett describes her team as an up-and-coming rock band who are currently rehearsing in the hope of finding their best sound.

The band is ambitious, they may not be famous yet, but they plan to sell out venues and tour the world.

However, at this point in time, in the early stages of their career, they’re writing new music and learning their instruments. Most of all, the band is learning to play together. 

Music is the theme Hyett adopted to accompany her first season as senior coach at the Western Bulldogs. It’s a concept that follows them throughout their training sessions, in their values and on the field on game day. 

Awards are named after instruments, certain plays are named after musical groups and parts of their game plan are called ‘hits’, like hit songs. It’s a way to simplify things, to help the group learn, and to make footy fun.

Hyett came to the club knowing this young group was not going to be an overnight success. She’s realistic, she knows it may take a few years until they’re at the top of the charts. But she’s determined, as are her musicians, who are keen to learn.

I spent a day at Whitten Oval, witnessing the Bulldogs’ new era under its new coach.

The formation of the band

At the end of 2023, an exodus of experience left the Bulldogs. 

All-Australians Kirsty Lamb and Katie Lynch found new homes at Port Adelaide and Gold Coast respectively, ruck Celine Moody joined her sister Brea at Carlton, and former No.1 draft pick Gabby Newton moved to the other side of the country to join the Dockers. These four players left and took their 187 games of experience with them.

Another key member of the Bulldogs, coach Nathan Burke, was let go. Burke had been at the club for five seasons and left last November with a record of 18 wins from his 46 games. CEO Ameet Bains said the club was moving into “a different direction” and was striving for “sustained success”.

The club went into the draft and trade period without a senior coach or general manager of football, leaving the Bulldogs’ Executive Director of Football Chris Grant to oversee the period in which the club signed 11 new players, four from the draft and seven from other clubs.

In February the Bulldogs appointed new senior coach Tam Hyett, who has now been at the helm for the past eight months.

Hyett has been around women’s football for a while now, having played herself in the VFLW, coached the Sandringham Dragons, and more recently was an assistant coach at Melbourne helping the side to AFLW premiership success in season seven. 

Another new member is Patrice Berthold, who joined in March as the General Manager of Women’s Football. The position had remained vacant since women’s football pioneer Debbie Lee left in August 2022 and the playing group said they missed the leadership that came with this position.

Both Hyett and Berthold are athletes in their own right, with Hyett once ranked the No. 2 women’s golfer in the world and Berthold representing her home state of Western Australia in cricket. 

The two got to work earlier this year with a playing list that had been set months before their arrival.

“It’s been a slow evolution around understanding what we’re working with, the environment and then us starting to put our mark on what we expect from the program and what we won’t accept either,” said Berthold.

“When you come into a program, there’s certain things that you need to wait and observe and there’s other things you’ve got to move pretty quickly on because it’s going to be harder to change. 

“So there was a bit of that change early on which, as tough as some of those decisions were, and sometimes the impact on people too, it unlocked the opportunity to do things a bit differently which has set our program up quite well.”

With Hyett came a new-look coaching group, with former Melbourne AFLW colleague Peter Mercoulia joining as a specialist coach, alongside Bulldogs premiership player Toby McLean (midfield), Ben Friggi (forwards) and Malcolm Bangs (specialist coach). Matt Skubis (backline) is the only remaining coach from 2023.

The side also had a change to their leadership, with a new captain in Deanna Berry announced in July. Berry replaced three-time All-Australian Ellie Blackburn in the role she had held for six seasons.

The decision raised a few eyebrows throughout the broader AFLW world, but the club backed their decision explaining the change was the result of a “new and robust leadership selection process” that was “reflective of the changes across our women’s program in the off-season”.

Writing new music

The first thing Hyett noticed when she entered the club was that she needed to go back to basics - strip it all back. Expectations needed to be set and standards and behaviours needed to be implemented.

“We needed to educate the group from day one,” Hyett said. “It’s such a young group, and yeah there are some experienced players, but we really had to strip it right back. We will continue to add layers as we go.

“We had to implement standards and behaviours, so they knew what we expected. It was a whole program approach, from the players to the staff.”

With a third of the playing group new to the club, and another 15 who had only known the Western Bulldogs, there were varying levels of football knowledge amongst the group, but the group was keen to learn. 

“They've craved an elite learning environment, and that high-performance mindset. They're high achievers themselves, off-field as well as on,” Hyett explained.

“Everyone can say, ‘we want to be more professional’, but it's having an understanding of what that looks like and at the moment, we're in that guidance phase to show them.”

The music theme was introduced to help provide that guidance. Each week a player is recognised for adhering to the group’s values and awarded the “Drummer of the Week”, where they are presented with a set of drumsticks.

Berthold believes the music theme has also helped the young group understand the game plan.

“I love that Tam has a theme,” Berthold said.

“Sometimes you can over-complicate things and it’s hard to make your message really clear, but the music theme helps revive that really clear focus.

“What I find with the young group is that you can sometimes default into sports jargon and assume that people know what you’re talking about. Sometimes the theme helps people learn and understand.”

As the players head out onto Whitten Oval for training you can see the new values and professionalism come into play. Captain Berry brings the group in for a chat, and the players huddle and listen. They set their intentions, discuss how they will make themselves and their teammates better, then head out to warm up, all on the same page. 

Backstage

Within my first few minutes of arriving at Whitten Oval, I was asked to bark.

“Everybody who joins our program has to bark at the start of training,”  Hyett said.

“Everyone has to do it, even Geoff from finance did it.”

On arriving at the club, Tam Hyett was asked to speak at an all-staff meeting, where she invited everyone there to come to training whenever they liked. 

Hyett calls them “coach-ons”, not train-ons, coach-ons, and Geoff from finance was one of the first to come down.

“It’s so important for the whole club to feel connected and welcome. That’s why we did it. Now when the players go to the kitchen to get a coffee, they know some of the staff, and the staff know the players.”

The barking and the coach-ons are just some of the ways Hyett has tried to make the club a relaxed and welcoming environment. 

The senior coach has a putting green in her office where players compete against each other, a lolly jar on her desk so players can come in and have a chat, and out on the track she joins in training to challenge her players, whilst also having a laugh with them.

Berthold credits Hyett’s ability to build relationships with people.

“It probably goes back to her strength of building connections with people, she’s very good at doing that, and in a genuine way,” Berthold said.

“I think that’s helped this group, because connections build trust and then from there, you can find that balance between let’s have a bit of fun, but when we’re focussed, we’re focussed. 

“She’s got a really nice way of being able to be direct, clear and kind at the same time and have that fun.”

2024 AFLW Tour

So far, the Bulldogs’ season nine AFLW tour has had some pretty incredible highs and lows.

All four of their 2023 draft picks debuted in week one, and in week two they played on the hallowed turf of the MCG. 

The young group were competitive against the reigning premiers Brisbane and the much-improved West Coast Eagles, and they banked two good wins against Collingwood and Sydney.

There have been injury lows, with five-time club best and fairest winner Ellie Blackburn, new recruits Lauren Ahrens and Mua Laloifi, and Jorja Borg and Keely Coyne all sidelined with season ending injuries.

However, the biggest talking point has surrounded the Dogs’ poor performance against Essendon in week seven. Not only was it the Dogs’ third goalless game of the season, but the defensive game-style prompted discussions about the future of the AFLW. Hyett’s post-game comments about the game going to plan only added fuel to the fire.

That criticism led to Hyett implementing a more attacking game-plan the following week against Carlton, with the Dogs subsequently thrashing the Blues by 33 points.

Berthold believes there’s a number of reasons contributing to her side’s inability to score at times.

“There’s been some mitigating factors in the games we’ve failed to score goals in, including coming up against the comp’s best defence on their home turf,” Berthold explained, referring to the Bulldogs’ loss to North Melbourne.

“While there’s been a focus on defensive fundamentals and how we can best set up to be competitive, our ultimate aim is always to score and win games.

“Opportunities have been created in the forward half but we’ve struggled to execute consistently at critical moments. As an inexperienced team, we’ll continue to learn and improve.

“We’ll keep working on connections between the lines, especially in the forward half, which will improve our ability to capitalise on those opportunities.”

Back to top of the charts

It’s hard to know when the Bulldogs will be back to their 2018 premiership best.

Walking into an empty players’ change rooms, it’s impossible to not feel the ghosts of their most successful era. The names of the 2018 premiership side adorn the brand-new lockers. 

Some of the game's best players used to call Whitten Oval home. Mon Conti, Bonnie Toogood, Emma Kearney, Katie Brennan, Libby Birch, Jenna Bruton. Two league best and fairests, three current club captains, numerous All-Australians. It feels like a lifetime ago.

When will Bulldogs fans witness another premiership era? Berthold is diplomatic with her answer.

“I think it’s hard to put an actual time on it, because even if you look at this season, some people were saying that we wouldn’t win a game,” Berthold said.

“We were aspirational that we would win a few, but again having a third of the list that’s new, you’ve got to wait and see. 

“The reality is this is a bit of a discovery period and (saying) okay, what's working, what’s not. We had a bit of information coming in, we’re testing that a little bit more.

“It’s going to take some time to consolidate and continue to build from that. I’d love to see some real success in the next few years, but I think a lot of that is going to come down to how we build the list, manage the list and keep developing our players.”

A successful Western Bulldogs in the next few seasons - that will be music to the ears of the Bulldogs faithful.