Year of the Dogs

This movie rocks!!!!!!! Its all about the Western (then Footscray) Bulldogs Australian Rules Football Club's 1996 season. It goes behind the scenes to show the emotions of winning and losing and other things about the club. Great movie. Watch it.

Someone took a camera and, by the looks of it, filmed every single thing that happened to the Footscray Football Club - the board meetings, the coach screaming inane clichés at the heavily put-upon players, the utter despair, the embarrassing fund raisers, the ridiculous suggestions made by clueless hangers-on, the star player's radiation therapy - everything. (Oh, yes: they filmed the actual football games as well.) IN ADDITION, we follow the two most devoted fans this or any other football club has ever had. By a curious coincidence, they not only know each other, they support the same side.

The fans are necessary. They let someone like me know what the hell is going on. One look at the expressions on their faces, and we can tell not just whether the Bulldogs are winning or losing, but precisely how well they are doing, to within ten points or so.

I loathed football before I saw this documentary. Come to think of it, I still do. But now I think I can see the value in it.

A great fly on the wall documentary on the Western Bulldogs' (formerly Footscray) tumultuous 1996. The coaches, the players and the fans are all filmed, showing the bare emotions of a team struggling to exist at the bottom of the ladder. It does have a happy postscript of sorts, as the dogs have made the AFL finals series every season since and almost made the Grand Final in 1997 and 1998, only to be thwarted by the might of the Adelaide Crows! Highly recommended film for all sports fans, as the story seen here could exist in any struggling sports club worldwide.

Footscray Football Club, "The Bulldogs," 1996. It's about a desperate club in desperate times. A club which must fight for survival on and off the field. A team that the league it plays in is even trying to kill off. Footscray FC receives no sympathy on any sides and it is shown in full in this piece.

It captures the tension, drama, sacrifice, depression and hope of a football club, during a season that it will struggle. Viewers will no doubt find the coach's address to his players before, during and after a game the focal point of this film. What we are left with is powerful speeches that will fuel our emotions. The language used by the people in it will stick in the minds of the viewer as it is unscripted and as-it-happened.

Take a step back and realise that the filmmakers had absolutely no idea what kind of year ahead the club was going to have. There is no narrator or voice-over, which leaves out such bias viewpoint as in other documentaries.

The score is excellent. An anthem which represents all the emotions shown, with a melody that spins off from the club song 'Sons of the 'Scray'. Pay particular attention to the closing credits, it features the Footscray stripes fading into black to the tune of the club song, in a coal miner's brass band style. It's also the last time we get to see the Bulldogs go by a proper name, Footscray.

What really makes 'Year of the Dogs' exceptional is the fact it has captured the mood and unscripted language of people, and through the use of music, camera-work and editing, at times gives it all the makings of a Hollywood movie.

This documentary was released the year after it was filmed, in 1997, fueling the Bulldogs almost fairy tale season of that year as they were approaching the finals. A film delivered at a time when no team had reached a Grand Final after finishing as low as fifteenth in the previous season. But the fairy tale was not to be. The Bulldogs stumbled in the final quarter of the preliminary final which would be their worst loss in memory.