Former Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy has tried to put into words what has happened with his old side since they won the premiership in 2016.
The Dogs will likely miss finals for the second consecutive year as they sit 14th on the ladder and are dealing with a number of injury issues.
Murphy said he doesn’t think people outside of the club and their supporter base really understand what happened when the club jumped from seventh to premiers in the space of a month.
“With the hunger thing and the premiership hangover thing, I think what needs to be put into context is winning premierships at the Bulldogs was not really on the menu, it was such a foreign thing,” he told the AFL Nation pregame show.
“Whereas clubs like Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong, clubs that win premierships, they climb mountains. They get to the mountain and think where’s the next mountain to climb?
"The premiership for the Bulldogs was like the moon and you’re trying to get there and all of a sudden the rocket goes a lot quicker than what it was going to go and you make it.
“This isn’t just the players, this is supporters and everyone involved in that football club was thinking, where to after that?”
“It’s a very complex thing of navigating success after that emotionally.
“The thing with the Dogs I think is that everyone needs to remove the analysis or the marking them against the finals series of 2016, because I don’t know if any side has reached that level of a month of football.”
Murphy believes changes are coming at the Dogs, but he isn’t quite sure that changing up the list is the issue.
“I start to get the sense there’ll be a fair bit of list change, but I think it’s more the psychological of when the club was in crisis and there was a sense of urgency because of how dire things were at the end of 2014,” he said.
“There was a sense of we have to get this absolutely right and that’s living on the edge. When I watch the Dogs at the moment, I don’t get the sense that they’re on the edge.”
The Dogs will take on North Melbourne next Saturday night at Etihad Stadium.