Leon Cameron believes the Bulldogs are suffering a hangover of sorts from their run to the Grand Final last year, and this combined with several injuries has led to their subpar performance in 2022.
The Dogs had the Grand Final for their taking halfway through the third quarter on September 25 last year, but their struggles since that point have been well documented.
Luke Beveridge’s troops sit 8-8 in 2022, now two games out of the top eight after Friday night’s brutal loss to Sydney.
Cameron, who left his post as head coach of the Giants earlier this year, believes the Dogs are well below their best right now.
“It just probably seems to me that the Dogs from last year, that magnificent run at the end of the year into the Grand Final… did that knock them around a bit?” he said on SEN’s Crunch Time.
“Does it then get to the players that have been to the top of the hill already and they go, ‘okay, I’m just a couple of per cent off’.
“You can be one or two per cent off but then the other sides like Carlton and Sydney are one and two per cent (more) on, so you only have that little turnaround and it’s huge.
“They’ve probably just struggled to come up from last year in terms of their form and flow and moving the ball.
“It just means they’re going at 97 per cent or 98 per cent, not 100 per cent.”
As a coach who also saw his team cop a massive Grand Final defeat to Richmond in 2019, Cameron sympathised with Beveridge in admitting it’s hard to know what to do.
The Giants went on to miss the finals in 2020.
The former coach also suggested the Dogs appear to be carrying a number of injuries.
Captain Marcus Bontempelli has been managing a shoulder niggle throughout the season, the 26-year-old down across the board on his 2021 numbers.
He’s just one of a number of players that Cameron speculated weren’t at their best because of their bodies.
“Secondly, clearly Bontempelli has had a really tough year and you feel for him because he’s the captain of the footy club, and he’s such a brave player and such an outstanding player,” he continued.
“If the season was done and dusted, he’s probably on a hospital bed at the moment getting operated on his shoulder.
“You can clearly see he’s only about 80 per cent and Bevo (Beveridge) will be doing everything possible to help him through the week and Bontempelli will be doing that too, (saying) ‘my name is read out, I’m ready to play’.
“So there’s probably a number of hidden things that people don’t know about at the moment, people there playing with some injuries and that’s probably getting to them, and the people (who) come and pick up that task of where those guys are letting down, it’s not happening at the moment so you put all that together, and their performances are not at the level of last year.”
The Dogs' finals hopes are on the brink following Friday night’s loss, now sitting two games out of the eight and playing four teams ahead of them on the ladder in their last six games.