Western Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli has full faith in his club’s ability to bounce back in 2026, after their heartbreaking finish to the season.
Despite winning 14 games and boasting the best percentage in the competition outside of the top two, the Dogs ultimately finished ninth after losing effectively a win-and-in game against Fremantle on the final Sunday of the season.
That narrow margin proved the difference between a shot at premiership glory and a September vacation.
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Marcus Bontempelli of the Bulldogs leads the team out. Getty
A true game of inches, the Dogs effectively smashed every team below them on the ladder and got within four goals of everyone above them, though they only managed to beat GWS of the top eight sides.
For Bontempelli, the improvement for the club is in those small margins: The development of younger players, injury luck and defensive discipline.
“It’s easy to let the weight and the enormity of not playing finals have you feel like a lot of things need to be fixed and changed, and I just don’t believe that, especially this year with how close the top nine was,” Bontempelli told Wide World of Sports.
“I’ve seen and read that to win that many games and miss finals is pretty rare.
“For us, that’s just the way it is. I don’t think the gap is too far. Ultimately you’ve got to let the emotion dissipate and be quite clinical in what things can help you get better.
“I believe in this group and I think it’s a young and talented group and in terms of what our future looks like, I do feel really strong about it. I just think there’s a couple of small but key aspects that if we can improve, I think that makes us a much more dangerous and consistent team.
“I’m probably one that believes that we’re not far away. You can definitely look at the defensive side of the game. If we had have shaved a few goals off defensively in a few different ways, I feel like we’re sitting in a much better position and definitely a game or two ahead of where we finished up.
“That’s what we want to do. We want to consistently be one of those teams winning 15 games and locking yourself in for September action.
“You’ve got to be pretty staunch in your pursuit of that and my confidence is that between our coaches and list management, they’ll put in a lot of time and effort in improving that from one year to the next.”
The Bulldogs look dejected. Getty
For the Dogs, if you told them in the pre-season they would have the breakout superstars of the competition in Sam Darcy and Ed Richards, another emergent youngster in Joel Freijah, the best value trade addition of the off-season in Matt Kennedy, five players in the All-Australian squad, not including Aaron Naughton, who would kick 60 goals, and a percentage near 140, they’d probably either do a backflip or nervously ask why nothing about their backline was mentioned.
But 2025 was an outlier season. The bar for playing finals was the highest it has ever been, sitting at 15 wins. It’s worth remembering in 2021, Essendon made the eight with just 11. The Dogs hosted a final last year with a worse overall record.
The Bulldogs’ uncertainty of personnel in defence was one key factor in their inability to clear that bar.
Thirty-four-year-old Liam Jones fell out of best 22 calculations, which put a lot of pressure on young or fringe players across the season. The hopes of their entire team rested on Rory Lobb holding up defensively, and while he was serviceable, it’s not a sentence anyone would have anticipated 18 months ago.
Another one of those fine margins was the injury list. It’s a not a surprise that the two teams with the best injury luck this year – Adelaide and Geelong – finished first and second respectively.
The Bulldogs didn’t have an Essendon-or-Carlton-style shopping receipt length injury list, but they effectively lost All-Australian midfielder Adam Treloar and star small forward Cody Weightman for the entire season.
Bontempelli himself missed the first quarter of the season with an injury suffered in a meaningless pre-season game.
Jamarra Ugle-Hagan. Getty
And then there’s Jamarra Ugle-Hagan: the No.1 pick in the 2020 draft coming off his best season of AFL footy, having kicked 43 goals in 2024.
He was not only a non-factor for the club in 2025, he would ultimately be a distraction, with off-field behavioural problems intertwined with mental health issues leading to him missing the entire year.
Bontempelli said they plan to take it slow and steady with the 23-year-old over the off-season, but the future for Ugle-Hagan remains clouded.
“Our support of Jamarra has been constant throughout the year. Continuing to try and put things in place and steps in a process in order for him to get back to regular programming really,” the Dogs’ skipper said.
“Ultimately it’s about not setting expectations. It’s about supporting him in all aspects of it and the football stuff is secondary.
“We’d love to have him back happy and healthy and playing, and that’s the main priority to be honest.”
As for Treloar, who is out of contract, he will be attempting to prove his fitness as he suits up for the Bulldogs across the VFL finals.
The 32-year-old suffered multiple calf strains across the 2025 season and was unable to get going at any point, coming off a career-best 2024.
Adam Treloar. Getty
Bontempelli admits he’s emotionally invested in Treloar’s VFL finals campaign and hopes he earns a contract for 2026.
“I’d love to see Adam go on and he’s clearly been a valued contributor. I don’t make those decisions so regardless of my emotions around it, that’ll play out over the next few weeks,” he said.
“What is good to see is he is back playing in the VFL and he’s putting together some great football. I hope he goes on and has a great finals series and gets some great confidence out of that and we see where the cards fall in a couple of weeks.”
The defensive issues spoke for themselves across the season. They gave up runs of five-plus goals in a row in multiple big games.
The stingy defensive profile that held them in such good stead in 2024 almost completely evaporated.
The Bulldogs have been linked with numerous defenders in the upcoming trade period, including the likes of Jack Silvagni, Jordan Ridley and Callum Wilkie.
Bontempelli personally doesn’t believe the solution is as simple as just plugging in a new piece next year.
“I think you’ve got to look at all aspects of it. I don’t necessarily think one player is going to come in and plug a hole, I think it’s got to be between personnel and systematic that we’ve got to understand the game a bit better,” he said.
“And I reckon a bit of it is on-field leadership. I reckon we could have handled on-field when opposition teams get runs of momentum in some of those key games, handled them a little bit better.
“I think it is a bit of a holistic approach. I love the idea of us being able to bring in a couple of players to bolster us defensively, to work in conjunction with the guys who did a pretty handy job all year.”
Marcus Bontempelli and Neila Brenning at the Brownlow Medal. AFL Photos via Getty Images
It might not be the September he was expecting, but Bontempelli will still have a heap on his plate regardless over the next month.
Marcus and partner Neila not only have a coffee shop to run in Kew, but they’re also planning a wedding and a home renovation. Enough to take anyone’s mind off the footy for a bit.
“I have plenty going on. My fiancé and I, we’re getting married in October. That’s taking up a fair bit of the brain space at the minute as we hurtle towards that at a rapid pace,” Bontempelli said.
“We’ve created a bit more work for me at the coffee shop. (Neila) had been running it from day to day until about a month ago, but she’s ducked off home to spend a bit more time with her family in the lead up to the wedding.
“So with the unwanted spare time now, not playing in September, I’m just being a bit more present at the coffee shop, helping the crew out here where I can and learning a bit more of the business we started six months ago.
“On top of that, we’re doing a home renovation at the minute too. That’s keeping us quite busy as well in the background.
“And then I do need a mini break at some point before I go away in October. I’ll hopefully be able to go away sort of prelim final week and spend four or five days somewhere where I can disconnect and unplug for a bit before what will probably be a pretty busy October.”
Marcus Bontempelli and his father. Supplied
Bontempelli will also spend this coming Father’s Day vying for his dad’s favouritism, as part of Solo’s Father’s Day grand final giveaway.
“It’s basically a bid for people like me and my family who are all at this time of year petitioning for being dad’s favourites to jump online and explain 25 words or less why you deserve to be dad’s favourite to go into the running to win a pretty handy package to the AFL grand final this year,” he said.
“I’ll be trying my hardest. Maybe the fact that I’m the only boy is working in my favour with three sisters, so hopefully that gets me a few extra brownie points for dad’s favouritism. I bloody hope so.”