#147 Phil Gould Opens Up On The Current State of the Bulldogs

Things must be very very bad if gus is on the media tour

I actually really liked this interview Jimmy asked the tough questions and Gus did answer a lot of questions we had I really enjoyed this as a dogs fan

Gus gas lighting is glorious to watch 😂

Gus has not met Galvin

Let me guess before watching... he was cryptic, spoke in generalities and admitted no fault?

I’ve seen politicians answer more questions coherently than Gus

I think Gus was hoping this would clear the air and help but all I heard was deflection, 0 accountability and excuses

Gus, when we sending the Galvinator to reserve grade to learn his craft?

Ciraldo's looking a bit tired.....

So many Injury excuses, Dogs got hammered against reserve grade parra and Brisbane

No accountability, everything is “coincidental”, doesn’t like to revisit questions fans have had for 12 months because no one ever addressed them 😂 Phil thinks we were born yesterday

Hi Gus, on behalf of Tigers fans, I’d like to personally thank you for taking Galvin off our hands. Since he agitated and insulted our coach to get out of our club, we’ve gone from strength to strength and you’ve gone downhill. You, your coach and James Graham won’t acknowledge it, but you had a winning hand last year running 1st and you tore it down chasing the shiny new toy. It’s a lesson in putting team chemistry over individual players.

Gus congrats you have a PHD in waffling

I actually think James Graham deserves credit here because, despite his obvious Bulldogs ties and respect for Gus, he’s asking the questions a lot of fans want asked. But honestly, listening to Gus dodge responsibility is infuriating. The part that keeps getting brushed over is the human side of what happened. The Bulldogs weren’t some broken team in need of a spine explosion. After Round 11 last year, they were on top of the ladder. Yes, people can talk about the draw, byes, who they played, whatever. But you don’t accidentally lead the competition halfway through a season. That side had belief, cohesion, defensive hunger, trust, and a clear identity. Then the Galvin situation happened and everything changed. A 19-year-old talent gets publicly hyped up as one of the best young players Gus has ever seen, suddenly there’s pressure for an immediate release, and next minute he’s at the Bulldogs mid-season. Then the ripple effect starts. Toby Sexton, who wasn’t flashy but was doing the job in a winning side, gets disrupted. Reed Mahoney, one of the blokes who had dragged the club through the hard years with grit and effort, suddenly looks unwanted. Matt Burton’s role becomes less clear. Bailey Hayward gets spoken about as a hooker solution despite not really being a natural dummy-half runner. Galvin gets wedged into halfback, arguably the most organisationally demanding position on the field, when that was never really his background. And somehow we’re meant to pretend that didn’t affect the dressing room? My question for Gus is simple: do you genuinely think those decisions had a positive or negative effect on team morale? Because from the outside, the message to the playing group looked pretty brutal: you can be winning, you can be on top of the ladder, you can be part of the club’s best form in years, and still get moved aside the moment a shiny new toy becomes available. Was there any serious consideration given to how the players would react? How combinations would be affected? How confidence would be affected? How Reed, Sexton, Burton, Hayward and the rest of the squad would process it? Or was it all just treated like a roster chessboard? And if the plan was always flexible, what was the actual fallback when it didn’t work? Were they willing to reverse course, or did they just keep trying to justify the original decision? That’s the accountability I want to hear. Not spin about soft draws, injuries, rule changes, or “we’re reviewing everything”. Every team has injuries. Every team deals with rule changes. Not every team tears apart a winning spine mid-season while sitting at the top of the competition. Maybe they still would have faded. Maybe they still would have had issues. Nobody can prove the alternate timeline. But it is very hard to look at the Bulldogs before the Galvin move, then after it, then the straight-sets finals exit, then this season’s collapse, and say the disruption had no effect. Gus is brilliant at controlling the narrative, but this is the question he needs to answer directly: Did your recruitment and roster decisions help the team’s belief, trust and cohesion, or did they damage it? Because if he can’t honestly answer that, nothing changes. And the louder the excuses get, the louder the fans are going to get too.

Good get

Damage control lol

Next headline DOGS CHASING CLEARY !

Look at the body language of Gus, say's it all. The guy does not make one admission, continually deflects. I feel for Dogs fans, you are in for a tough ride until Laundy sacks Gus.

Had a well oiled machine and threw a Galvan in the works. Now his blaming everything & everyone but him self ..

Great podcast. Nothing is a simple as its seems. They will bounce back .