"Questions answer themselves": Whateley's harsh thoughts on Bulldogs coach

SEN’s Gerard Whateley has expressed his discontent with Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge following another underperformance in 2024.

Following the club’s disappointing elimination final loss to the Hawks, Whateley feels as though the Bulldogs have received their answer regarding Beveridge’s ability to lead the club back to the heights of 2016.

“Whenever the heat has come for Beveridge, the Bulldogs have had the safety as he has been safely in contract and all they had to do was ask themselves the question whether everything was as it should be, and then ignore the outside”, Whateley told SEN’s Crunch Time.

“Next year would be the last year of his contract.

“There are two streams of thought, put the coach on the edge of the plank and go ‘let’s find out’, but the modern set up is if you put the coach on the edge of the plank you never really find out because it gets inside the walls.

“It’s got very little to do with the coach and more to do with the environment.

“We saw it blow up and Leon Cameron barely lasted eight rounds, Nathan Buckley got to halfway so the only one that got through was Ken Hinkley, but I’ll argue all day long that that wasn’t successful.

“They set up the wrong strategy, he was coaching for his life winning thirteen in a row and they forgot about what it’s going to look like when it actually matters.”

With just one year left on Beveridge’s deal, Whateley believes it may be beneficial for the club to simply cut ties as early as possible.

“It’s a very difficult thing to navigate, and my view is different”, he said.

“Your business is better off paying out one year, to provide the environment of ‘let’s thrive’, rather than it all falls apart because of what gets inside.

“I think the (Justin) Longmuir decision was going to cost, say, $650,000 for one year, that’s money well spent to get your answer as opposed to it blowing up your season.

“It’s not hard to imagine Beveridge goes into next year they start 2 and 3, and the whole thing falls apart, because of the uncertainty.”

This comes after what was an extremely up and down season for the Bulldogs. Entering the year, the Dogs were expected to make a finals push given their ninth-place finish in 2023.

The year failed to properly kick off until late in the season, sitting on just eight wins in Round 18 before taking home six of their last seven.

Entering September, the Dogs were widely seen as one of the favourites to take the premiership despite missing out on a top four finish.

With all that being said, they fell short, yet again.

“The Bulldogs didn’t know where they were going to land," Whateley continued.

"They go to the finals as one of the hot teams, their profile was spot on, but they are out again in an elimination final.

“If they make the prelim, these questions all answer themselves.

“But they didn’t, they are out again in the same spot that they keep going out, the miss the top four, and they lose the elimination final.

“Three weeks ago, this wasn’t their trajectory. Three weeks ago, it was ‘are we making a prelim’, ‘are we making a Grand Final here’?

“They just got their answer last night, and that’s the ultimate answer, ‘oh we’re in the same spot we’re always in’.

“So that’s where I reckon it gets interesting, and then trying to forecast the long-term coach, who is a premiership coach, is he still going to be the coach in three years’ time? Is this the final throws of it? Is there a second life to it?

“I reckon those are the questions you can only start to answer now that you’ve got the final result, because in May it looked shaky as, in August it looked rosy, but now in September it’s the ‘oh it’s the same answer’.

“It’s totally counterproductive going into next season with Luke Beveridge in the last year of his contract.”