Former Western Bulldogs coach Terry Wallace has detailed the elaborate lengths the club went to hide their infamous “super flood” plan from Essendon in 2000.
The Dogs caused one of the AFL’s greatest ever upsets when they defeated the previously unbeaten Bombers by 11 points in round 21.
The match is largely remembered for the Bulldogs implementing never-before-seen tactics defensively, with virtually all of their players pushing back into Essendon’s attacking 50 to limit the Bombers’ scoring.
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Wallace explained the drastic lengths the club went during the week to keep their plans secret on 3AW’s Footy: Then and Now podcast.
“We had said to the press we were going to have a very light week and were treating this like a final and all we were going to do light skills,” he said.
“That’s the way we had planned it all.
“At the Whitten Oval, I’d do an interview with the press before training, we’d kick a few balls around and Essendon would be there watching to see who was out on the track etc.
“But what we were doing then was packing up all our gear, going down to Werribee – who was our affiliate club in the VFL – and we had the whole of the Werribee ground gridded out.
“We had painted the ground into the grids where the players were to stand on the Friday night.
“Essendon thought we were going home, because we’d finished our training session, but we were all driving down the highway and going to Werribee to actually go and train this without peering eyes.
“Did we catch them out? Yeah, I think we did.”
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https://omny.fm/shows/3aw-is-football/essendon-vs-western-bulldogs-terry-wallace-the-sup/embed
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