Western Bulldogs
| Western Bulldogs Football Club Logo | |
| Full name | Western Bulldogs Football Club (Formerly known as Footscray Football Club) |
|---|---|
| Sport | Australian rules football |
| Founded | 1883 |
| League | Australian Football League |
| Home ground | Telstra Dome |
| Anthem | Sons of the West |
| President | David Smorgon |
| Head coach | Rodney Eade |
| Captain | Luke Darcy |
| 2005 | 9th of 16 |
| Strip | |
| Blue guernsey with red and white horizontal stripes around the midriff with bulldog logo. Blue Shorts. Blue Socks with Red and White trim | |
The Western Bulldogs, formerly known as the Footscray Football Club or The Bulldogs is an Australian Football League (AFL) club based at the Whitten Oval in western suburban Melbourne, Australia, drawing its supporter base from this traditionally poor, industrial, and less leafy part of Melbourne. Virtually since its founding, it has been one of the league's less successful clubs, both in terms of on-field success and off-field resources.
It has won only one premiership, while playing in the VFL/AFL, in 1954.
This success was in no small part due to two champions of the club - Charlie Sutton the wily and tough Captain/Coach and the club's and one of Australian Rules' best ever players, Ted Whitten, otherwise known as 'Mr Football'. Charlie claims to have invented the modern play on style of football - run, handball, run, kick. While Teddy Whitten has been the source of more arguments on who is the greatest player than any other to grace the fields of Australian Rules Football.
Both before and after 1954 the club struggled to make the final '4' however it almost always managed to hold itself a few games above the 'cellar dwellers' on the ladder.
It had players of both quality and character such as Charlie and Ted, later Gary Dempsey, the heroic ruckman who was badly burnt in bushfires in 1967 but managed to take out the game's top individual award, the Brownlow Medal in 1975. Or Doug Hawkins, the roguish lad as much at home with a beer as taking on the likes of 'Dipper' on the outer wing of the Western Oval - the Doug Hawkins Wing. Even Simon 'the Pieman' Beasley, a deadly accurate full-forward and stockbroker who broke the image of blue collar players at the club.
In the dim distant past (1900 to 1925) the club won a string of premierships in the VFA, but after the mightiest clubs had broken away and formed the VFL, the forerunner of the AFL.
Under tightly focussed management by club president David Smorgon, driven coaching by Terry Wallace, and the on-field leadership of Chris Grant and Tony Liberatore, the club had a relatively successful period through the mid- to late 1990s, making the finals from 1997 to 2000. However, without a premiership win, the club's future as ever looks on a knife's edge.
During Smorgon's term, the club was renamed from Footscray to Western Bulldogs and moved from the Whitten Oval to the Telstra Dome. After Bulldogs legend E.J Whitten died, a memorial statue was erected at the Whitten Oval in his honour.
After a 'quiet' period under former coach Peter Rohde, the Bulldogs are looking to a brighter future with the appointment of Rodney 'Rocket' Eade as coach in 2005. Improvement was immediate with the Bulldogs winning 11 games and finishing 9th on the ladder in 2005, just missing out on the finals by 1/2 a game. Missing the finals dealt a blow to both players and supporters of the team as hot late season form saw the team being considered real premiership contenders, even though a finals berth had not been secured.
Although the club has a large and passionate supporter base, since the 1990s the Western Bulldogs have struggled for membership and financially, avoiding folding or merging with another club through heavy subsidisation from the AFL as part of a competitive balance fund.
Looking for new markets, the club plays one game every year at the S.C.G. in Sydney and one home game each year at Marrara Oval in Darwin.
Individual Awards
Brownlow Medal winners
- Allan Hopkins (1930)
- Norman Ware (1941)
- Peter Box (1956)
- John Schultz (1960)
- Gary Dempsey (1975)
- Kelvin Templeton (1980)
- Brad Hardie (1985)
- Tony Liberatore (1990)
- Scott Wynd (1992)
Leigh Matthews Trophy winners
- Luke Darcy (2002, with Michael Voss)
Coleman Medal winners
- Jack Collins (1957)
- Kelvin Templeton (1978, 1979)
- Simon Beasley (1985)
Current roster
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 | This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. |
Australian Football Hall of Fame Players
Team of the Century
In May 2002, the club announced a team of the greatest players from the last century.
| Backs: | Charlie Sutton | Herb Henderson | John Schultz |
| Half Backs: | Wally Donald | Ted Whitten Senior (captain) | John Jillard |
| Centres: | Harry Hickey | Allan Hopkins | Doug Hawkins (vice-captain) |
| Half Forwards: | Alby Morrison | Kelvin Templeton | Chris Grant |
| Forwards: | Jack Collins | Simon Beasley | George Bisset |
| Followers: | Gary Dempsey | Scott West | Brian Royal |
| Interchange: | Jim Gallagher | Arthur Olliver | Brad Johnson |
| Norm Ware | Tony Liberatore | Scott Wynd | |
| Coach: | Charlie Sutton |
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