​A blog exploring
​why footy matters

LATEST POST:
Ode to the BullGods


Another year, another premiership hero departs.

Yet I'm giving thanks, and remembering, all that we are owed to the 2016 BullGods.

​Read: Ode to the BullGods

relive:
​ the 2016 finals series

The Tragician Blog documented each heart-stopping and emotional moment of the 2016 finals series which saw the Western Bulldogs win a premiership after 62 years of heartbreak and failure.
​
​READ:
Elimination final vs West Coast
this story is our story
Semi final vs Hawthorn
The daydream believers
​Preliminary final vs GWS
​Why not us?
The premiership blog:
The force was with us

journeys:
​memory. belonging.

"There's the familiar thump thump thump sound of hundreds of footy hitting the grass. This is the same turf where my late father, a talented rover who grew up a few blocks away, took the field in the 1950s as a young reserves player. The clock, which he designed as a draftsman working at Olympic Tyres, is no longer there...."​

​Read: The true believers
​Places in my past
There's always next year

Players' stories

"The Bont"

Right from the start, the Bulldog Tragician was entranced by the amazing talent of a teenage prodigy we began to call The Bont.
​
Read: All about the Bont

​About the final vs GWS in which Bont was relentlessly targeted:
The end of the innocence

Bob Murphy

Perhaps he could only have been captain at a club like the Western Bulldogs..


​​Read : One more song
​
When Bob did his knee: Moments

On Bob's retirement: Endings. Beginnings

Jake Stringer & Jack Macrae

Two young guns, drafted in the same year.
But over time their paths - and our perceptions of them - diverged.

​
​Read: The story of Jake and Jack

Fletcher Roberts

The magic of the 2016 premiership was in the roles of every single player, even one who had just two possessions, yet sitting next to one of them (Fletcher Roberts) on a plane one day, I was somehow too shy to just say: 'Thanks."
​
Read: Accidental heroes

Daniel Cross

My favourite players have often been the less flashy, quiet achievers and in Daniel Cross, I always saw a player who was everything that is wonderful about footy.

​​Read : The wrong side of the Whiteboard
​
On his bravery: On Daniel Cross and extraordinary courage

Tom Boyd

He's a premiership immortal. He's also a young man on whom too much expectation was heaped, and now his work in the mental health space is even more important than his match-winning performance on Grand Final Day.
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​Read: A life in the day
Read: Footy joy, footy sorrow
Picture
​"My mother promised me I could start coming to ‘home’ games when I turned four years old. In my child’s imagination, a home game would mean that the footballers played, much like my brother and I, kick-to-kick in a player's backyard. I expected this to be with the only player I could name. Naturally this was Ted Whitten. I can still recall my amazement when the eagerly awaited day arrived and I walked in for the first time to the Western Oval (not yet christened in the legend’s name), to be greeted by what seemed like a vast expanse of emerald green grass. 

"There was a unique smell of wet duffel coats, donut vans, and something indefinably Western Oval. (It may have been the plumbing). The players were remote and tiny specks far off in the distance. They wore dressing gowns and ate oranges while they listened to Ted rev them up in the breaks. We walked up to our seats in the John Gent stand - it was rickety even then. The Hyde Street band marched around the oval, coins whizzing dangerously past their heads. 

"I was entranced. So began my journey as a fan...'