The Sad Bulldog

My team, my beloved Bulldogs have been in the feature Thursday night football game for two consecutive weeks. This inevitably leads disgruntled and disappointed fans like myself, to donning our jerseys and settling down to cheer for our team, knowing that we will, in all likelihood, lose the match despite our most insane hopes. Everyone else watching knows it too. 

It also means suffering through the pre-amble, the pre-match panel discussion which these days is just a tragic reminder of our inadequacies as a rugby league team. Even the commentators know we will lose, and don't pretend to 'talk up' their chances.

Among the usual things said about how we are limited in attack ( a kind way of saying that we suck) and therefore would probably lose, this alarming statistic was shared with viewers around the country: The 2017 Bulldogs have the worst attacking record of any Bulldogs team since 1968. That's 49 years. The same number of years I have been visiting this planet. Back then we weren't even called the Bulldogs. We were known as the Canterbury-Bankstown Berries and with a sissy name like 'Berries', it's a wonder we won any games at all.

We played the Panthers last Thursday night and competed well in the first half. In the second, it was anybody's game, but winning would require a change of gears: a lifting of intensity. The Panthers shifted gears and began to overpower us. In response we maintained maximum effort without changing gears. The final score was 8-16, but it may as well have been 8-36 or worse. 

There was a game earlier in the year against the defending premiers which was likewise in the balance. Ours for the taking, if we were good enough. We weren't. We aren't. Woe are Bulldogs fans. Woe. Woe. Woe.

Maybe we should start calling ourselves the Berries again because we play football as well as fruit does.