Bulldogs back with bite
Len Johnson | April 21, 2007
The Age
THE Western Bulldogs got back on the winning list after successive hidings from Adelaide and St Kilda with a 32-point win over Richmond at the MCG last night.
If they didn't quite make a meal of it, the Bulldogs turned the win into a pretty substantial entree. At times in each quarter they led comfortably — by 25 points in the first, 39 in the second, 30 in the third and 43 in the last — but somehow Richmond managed to look threatening for most of the second half.
Goals by Graham Polak either side of three-quarter-time slashed the Bulldogs' lead to 16 points. And his long shot from the pocket to make it 10 was not that far away either. It gave the Tigers a sniff at their first win of the season, an unlikely prospect when they trailed by 39 points during the first half and by 30 late in the third term.
In the next 15 minutes, however, the Bulldogs added seven goals to two. The Adam Cooney brace at the end of this surge took their lead to 43 points, the biggest of the night.
Brad Johnson got the first of the sequence, but it was Robert Murphy who was the architect. He snapped two goals himself, one from either pocket and one from either foot and set up the first of Cooney's pair with as sweet a pass across a crowded 50-metre arc as you could hope to see.
In the end, the Bulldogs had too many options. Luke Darcy marked strongly to get four goals in the first half. Murphy got four for the game, too, playing as a mobile forward, while Cooney's three last-quarter goals took him to four for the night as well.
Making a much better fist of the third quarter than the first half, Richmond closed to within 22 points at the final change with a late goal to Polak. The Tigers had reduced a 33-point deficit at half-time to one they looked like they could possibly make good.
Andrew Krakouer created the final goal of the term, which enabled his side to add an inaccurate 3.8 to the Bulldogs' 2.3.
He persistently attacked the ball or harassed opponents as the Bulldogs struggled to run down the clock to the siren and it was his centring kick from almost under a boundary-line pack that Polak ran in, unopposed, to mark 15 metres from goal.
Nathan Foley was a key player for the Tigers in the term, continually getting his hands on the ball at the centre-square contests and setting a teammate up with a quick kick or, more often, a handpass.
Foley, indeed, had had a chance to cut the margin to 19 points a few minutes earlier, but his speculative shot from 40 metres out instead thudded into the goalpost.
It was a costly miss. From the kick-in, the Bulldogs took the ball the length of the ground for Shaun Higgins to run in and slot home their 12th goal.
Despite the fact that Richmond had collected 25 more possessions, it really looked like it could have been more.
Daniel Cross, probably the Dogs' best in the loss to St Kilda last week, was a late withdrawal from the Bulldogs' side. It did not appear to make much difference, as by half-time his replacement, Matthew Robbins, had kicked two goals.
Robbins' second goal, the Bulldogs' 10th, extended their lead to 39 points with plenty of the second quarter left.
Murphy was reported late in the term for making high contact with Richmond's Andrew Raines, but it appeared a case of Raines diving in for the ball creating the contact.
The Bulldogs kicked six goals in the first term, three of them to Darcy, who gave them a tall target at full-forward. His first goal came from a free kick against Luke McGuane; he took a grass-cutter pass from Robbins for his second and out-marked McGuane for his third.
The Bulldogs twice led by 25 points in the term, but late goals to Greg Tivendale and Matthew Richardson cut the margin to 14 at the first break. Richardson's goal, from a mark in front of his immediate opponent, Brian Harris, was his 700th goal.
The Age's Best:
Richmond: N Foley A Raines C Hyde J Bowden S Tuck G Polak K Johnson.
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