THE WESTERN Bulldogs may have won big, demolishing Essendon by 91 points, but the victory was soured by news livewire Cody Weightman has been ruled out for the year.
Weightman has not played this season, undergoing surgery in February for a rare congenital knee issue called bipartite patella, having a false joint within his kneecap.
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Coach Luke Beveridge told reporters in his post-match press conference the 24-year-old requires an additional operation.
Sam Darcy (knee) will be available "just after" the bye, while small forward Arty Jones needs scans on a hamstring injury suffered in the second quarter.
"We won't get 'Flea' Weightman back now this year, we've just got to get used to that," Beveridge said.
"Now he's processed the fact he's not going to play – he's not relieved, because he'd love to play, but he's OK, got peace of mind. Now he knows what he can do in the meantime. He'll probably have another surgery between now and the end of the year, that'll happen in the not-so-distant future.
"But as you'd expect, he's such a great human being, he wants to know what his role is off-field, he wants to know how he can help. So, we've got to find something for him."
On a night of big performances, it was dependable half-back Bailey Dale who shone the brightest, finishing with a club-record 49 disposals. He had 37 kicks, 1016m gained and three contested possessions.
"It's pretty significant. He had a lot of the ball, but he also won the footy back for us a lot. I think the stat sheet will show a lot of it was uncontested play, but the willingness to run in the main two phases, out-number defensively but also really link up and be creative through the middle of the ground was first rate, quite exemplary," Beveridge said.
"I was surprised the crowd knew, I don't know how they got the message, did it go up on the scoreboard? But I think once it got to 49, everyone was riding it a little bit, trying to get him to 50.
"I think at one stage, knowing we were playing Geelong this week, I think he'd had about 25 and mostly kicks in the first half, and I said he's on track to do what Peter Featherby did, and I don't think anyone in the box knew what I was talking about. Peter Featherby years ago for Geelong had 40 kicks one day (in 1981) and about three handballs. Showing my age there."
Essendon coach Brad Scott was well aware of the impact of Dale, saying while he was pleased Ben McKay and Will Setterfield had performed well in their one-on-one battles with Aaron Naughton and Marcus Bontempelli respectively, they had no answer for the star Dog.
"Bailey Dale has the ball a lot, but almost 30 handball receives, because they're winning the ball and giving it to him. We had a couple of plans for him, clearly both of them didn't work, then we went to an even-numbered forward line and tried to attack him, and that didn't work either," Scott said.
"If I coached him, I'd want the ball in his hands. He was a problem all night, the match-ups we had for him didn't work.
"But it's broader than that. When you're being beaten around the ball, and their ability to absorb our pressure and feed the ball to their teammates was very slick tonight. While we've got a lot of work to do in that area, they were very good at that."
Scott said such was the margin of the game, he was processing the loss as the game was still being played.
"I think first things first, the Bulldogs were very good tonight, they were very slick with their hands, they had really good work-rate," he said.
"Equally as good as they were, we were poor. Right at the start of the game, we had some opportunities missed going forward, but I think they kicked their first three goals from broken tackles.
"That was a bit of a theme for the night. Tackling statistics, they came out roughly even throughout the night, and our pressure numbers were very good, but probably as they should be, as we lost groundball by 20-odd. But we tackled at 40 per cent, they tackled at 70 per cent. And even when we did tackle them, they supported the contest really well and got the ball out.
"That all compounds into numbers like 1000m difference from stoppage, which compounds into inside-50 differential. Our GPS numbers will be the highest they have been all year, like they are when you're chasing and being beaten around the ball.
"I think it's a really good lesson for us, that we need to be better with ball in hand and absorbing their pressure. Our pressure's generally been pretty good, but the pressure number was a bit of a furphy tonight."
