This Saturday, the Bulldogs will take on the Brisbane Lions at Norwood Oval in Adelaide as part of Gather Round. Including Brisbane’s previous incarnation as the Bears, Norwood Oval will be the eighth AFL ground on which the two sides have crossed swords. The teams first met at Carrara on the Gold Coast (now the Suns’ home ground) in 1987 before a return game at Western (now Mission Whitten) Oval later that year, with the Doggies the victors both times.

Over the next 10 years the Bulldogs met the Brisbane Bears nine times at Footscray’s fortress, and the Dogs won all but one of the encounters. The closest the Bears got to the Bulldogs in any of those eight wins for the Bulldogs was a five-point loss in a match dominated by Tony Liberatore in 1991. The OG Libba collected 34 touches that day, while 18-year-old teammate Ben Sexton kicked five goals in his AFL debut.

A year later the Dogs recorded their biggest win over Brisbane in Footscray. In the final home-and-away round of 1992, the Dogs led the Bears by just 10 points at the final break, but blew them away with an eight-goal last-quarter burst to win by 57. Libba starred again with 27 disposals, while Chris Grant, Doug Hawkins, Danny Del-Re and Steve Kolyniuk each booted three goals.

A couple of years earlier, in 1990, the Dogs had closed out the season with another Western Oval win over Brisbane. That game was memorable not for the 21-point margin and not even for the fact that Terry Wallace starred in his milestone 250^th game, picking up 31 possessions and three Brownlow votes.

What made the match truly memorable was a courageous mark taken by Bulldog Glenn Coleman just before half-time. In taking the mark the burly big man collided with a point post. The post came off second best, snapping at its base and crashing to the ground.

Play was held up for five minutes while officials frantically searched for a replacement post. A ‘little league’ post was briefly used to fill the breach, with a full-sized version installed at half time.

Coleman himself was unfazed by the collision. The Sunday Age’s Mark Brolly encapsulated the moment succinctly: “The post was carried off while Coleman carried on.”

By 1994 the Brisbane Bears had made a permanent move to the actual city of Brisbane, and they hosted Footscray at the Gabba for the first time that year. The Bulldogs kicked off their era at the stadium with a hard-fought 10-point win over the Bears. Chris Grant kicked five goals for the winners, and a 23-year-old named Luke Beveridge kicked two. Bevo was named among the Dogs’ best in the Sunday Age the next day.

Three years later the Bears had merged with Fitzroy to become the Brisbane Lions, and the Bulldogs had made Princes Park in Carlton its temporary home venue ahead of the building of Docklands Stadium. The Dogs hosted Brisbane at the famous Carlton ground in both 1997 and 1998. Although the Lions won the first time around, the second of those matches resulted in a whopping 91-point win, still the Dogs’ biggest ever against Brisbane.

Docklands became the fifth venue at which the two sides met in March 2000, and since then they have played each other 16 times, with the Bulldogs winning 10. The teams haven’t changed names since that first meeting, but the stadium name has. Before it became Marvel Stadium the Docklands venue was known as Telstra Dome, Colonial Stadium and Emirates Stadium.

In 2008 the Western Bulldogs and Brisbane met for the first time at the MCG, the Dogs hosting the Lions in a Round 12 home game at the iconic stadium. The pair did battle there again in the following year’s first semi-final, but have never met there since.

Ballarat’s Mars Stadium became venue number seven in 2019. The two sides met there again in 2021, with the Western Bulldogs winning by 19 points, making it two from two for the Doggies at their home away from home.

With the exception of the Gabba, the Bulldogs have a winning record against Brisbane at all venues. They’ll be looking to add Norwood Oval to that list this Saturday.

Bulldogs’ record against Brisbane (Lions and Bears), by venue:

Before Brisbane

Not to be forgotten is the other half of the merger that created the Brisbane Lions – Fitzroy. When Footscray joined the VFL in 1925, the Maroons (as the Lions were then known) were the Bulldogs’ very first opponent. The Dogs put up a pretty good show playing away against a team that had made finals in the three previous seasons (winning the flag in 1922) but ultimately fell nine points short.  Eleven weeks later the Bulldogs turned the tables, recording a stunning 41-point win at home, their first ever against the Roys in the ‘big league’.