For those who supported the Bulldogs through the 80s, 90s, 00s and early 2010s would know that after having a bad season, the Bulldogs will bounce back immediately the next season. Either in the grand final or as Grand Final winner. You'd watch the team play with pride, passion, aggression and never take back foot step.
We would use to bash teams through the middle, playing entertaining football and teams use to fear and hate playing against us. The Dogs of War and the Entertainers.
But it just seems we have lost that identity towards the end of Dessie's reign as coach when he became the mad professor by being obsessed with Stats, numbers and metrics and we just became a very stale, boring and very predictable team to watch under Dessie. And since Dessie's sacking, we opted for assistant coaches like Dean Pay (to be fair he was given the rough end of the deal with a farked salary cap and a very unbalanced team and C-virus didn't help either), Trent Barrett and now Cameron Ciraldo.
When Barrett got the sack (despite what Gus says) and Potter took over as coach on the interim, it took Potter a few weeks to get the Barrett's Panthers system out of the players to play their game and when we played Parra last season and smashed them 36-6, it was like watching the Bulldogs of the early 2000s under Steve Folkes, there was that passion, pride, enthusiasm, confidence and aggression that we have lacked for so many years, we were bashing teams through the middle with our forwards and playing entertaining football. I remembered seeing Cooper Cronk on Fox League getting very excited to watch the Bulldogs play and he said he hasn't seen this kind of football from the Bulldogs since early in his career. Andrew Johns on the Sunday Footy show even said he can't remember the last time he was so excited to watch a Bulldogs team play. Anasta and Ennis felt that this is the Bulldogs they both know.
But with Gus deciding to go with Ciraldo as coach and Potter as assistant, I'd give Ciraldo the benefit of the doubt to see what he can do to improve on from last season and so far, he has done nothing to improve, in fact, I think we have gone backwards under Ciraldo and again we've gone back to trying to play the Panthers system and with the way how the players are playing, it just looks so forced. It just looks like we have an identity crisis trying to be the Penrith Panthers in every way. To me it doesn't feel like the Bulldogs club I know, every week, every season since 2016, it's a cycle of the same shit and they've become a team that I don't recognise anymore.
