There’s no love lost between the Western Bulldogs and the GWS Giants, and their fierce rivalry is unlikely to abate when the two sides cross swords on Thursday night. With both sides vulnerable to missing out on a place in the finals, the Marvel Stadium match looms as a proverbial ‘eight-point game’.

It will by no means be the first time an entire season has potentially been at stake in a Bulldogs v Giants encounter. In fact, it was only last year that the Dogs hosted GWS at Mars Stadium in Ballarat in the final home-and-away round needing to beat the Giants to guarantee a finals berth.

Bulldogs fans who made the trip west to see the game may have done so with some trepidation. Just over 12 months earlier the Dogs had given up a 35-point third-quarter lead to go down by five points to the Giants at the same venue.

A year on the Dogs started slowly, registering only a single goal in the first quarter through Cody Weightman while GWS scored three to lead by 11 points at the first break. Once the teams changed ends though, the Bulldogs hit their straps at their second home, piling on five goals in 13 minutes to open up a 22-point lead, and the margin was still 17 points in favour of the Western Bulldogs when the half-time siren sounded.

As they had in the corresponding game in 2023, the Giants mounted a second-half challenge and by midway through the final quarter they had closed the gap to just 11 points.

With their season potentially on the line, the Bulldogs stood up in the final 15 minutes, unleashing a burst of four goals in eight minutes to put the match beyond the Giants’ reach. The Dogs ran out winners by 37 points, the final margin as big as it had been all afternoon, booking their place in the 2024 finals.

Ed Richards was a star for the Dogs, kicking two goals to go with his 29 disposals, while Bailey Dale (27 possessions and a goal) was also a valuable contributor and skipper Marcus Bontempelli (22 touches and a goal) played a typically reliable captain’s role.

In the penultimate round of 2022, the Dogs met GWS at Marvel Stadium needing to win that game and another the following week against Hawthorn to have a chance of sneaking into the finals.

Going into that game, Greater Western Sydney sat third-last on the ladder and Luke Beveridge’s charges were warm favourites to make short work of the visitors. The Dogs-Giants rivalry soon kicked in, however, ensuring the game would not be a ‘gimme’ for the home side.

In a surprisingly dour and low-scoring affair ‘under the lid’, the two teams slugged it out in a match that produced only 17 goals between them. The Giants took a five-point lead into the final term, a quarter that ultimately produced only one goal.

Fortunately for the Bulldogs, that goal was kicked by Jamarra Ugle-Hagan midway through that desperate final quarter, and it gave his side a lead that they would cling on to until the final siren sounded.

The Bulldogs won the match 9.8.62 to 8.9.57, enabling them to live to fight another day. Incredibly, four of the Dogs’ nine goals came in a six-minute patch in the third term, two from Bailey Williams, and one each to Tim English and Bailey Smith.

A week later the Dogs again had trouble shaking off the opposition, but eventually did so to defeat Hawthorn by 23 points, before surviving a nervous couple of hours waiting to see if Collingwood could defeat Carlton. In a nail-biting thriller, the Magpies did just that, and the Bulldogs qualified for finals for a record-equalling fourth year in a row.

In the corresponding round three years earlier, the Dogs kicked off that run of four consecutive finals appearances by travelling north to take on GWS on the Giants’ home turf.

Again the Dogs went in needing a win to keep the dream alive, and they came up against a strong GWS team that was firmly entrenched in the top eight. While Bulldogs fans’ nerves may have jangled in the first half, which ended with the Giants three points ahead, they quickly subsided during the third term after a goal from Bailey Smith triggered an avalanche of Bulldogs goals.

Smith’s major was followed by one each to Tayor Duryea, Josh Schache, Josh Dunkley and Aaron Naughton to set up a three-quarter time lead of 29 points. The final break did nothing to arrest the run, and the Dogs added another five goals in the last term to secure a 61-point thrashing.

The Dogs backed up the win with another big one against Adelaide in Ballarat the following week, ensuring a top eight finish for the red, white and blue. Sadly the Dogs’ 2019 finals run came to an abrupt halt in its first week, when they travelled back to the Giants’ home territory but could not repeat the efforts of a fortnight earlier.

Each of these matches helped to cement the passionate rivalry that had developed between the Bulldogs and Giants, but the encounter that had taken the footballing feud to its passionate heights was, of course, the 2016 Preliminary Final.

For Doggies’ fans this epic encounter is so entrenched in their memories its story barely needs retelling. History shows that the Bulldogs travelled north having defeated West Coast in Perth in week one of the finals, and triple reigning premiers Hawthorn at the MCG in week two, both times as underdogs.

Luke Beveridge’s men were underdogs again in the preliminary final but took a growing belief that the unlikeliest of premierships was a real possibility. In a match described by many as one of the greatest finals – if not the greatest – of all time, the Giants and Bulldogs slugged it out for 120 unforgiving minutes, delivering blows and counterblows throughout, neither giving an inch.

On the back of herculean efforts from the entire team, highlighted by four goals from Clay Smith, the Dogs took a nine-point lead into the long break. By three-quarter time, though, the two sides were back on virtually equal footing, GWS clinging to a one-point lead.

The dream of a place in a Grand Final appeared to be slipping away from the Bulldogs after the Giants kicked the first two goals of the final quarter to set up a game-high 14-point lead, but the Bulldogs dug deep, as deep as they had all season, and galvanised themselves for one final charge. The next 25 minutes was punctuated by countless acts of Doggie daring and Bulldog bravery.

Heroics were displayed all over the field, from Matthew Boyd’s mid-air hack to Jason Johannisen’s burst from defence to Marcus Bontempelli’s ‘basketball’ pick-up to his goal that gave the Dogs the lead, there were acts of brilliance everywhere. The aforementioned ones alone came from a single passage of play!

There were many others as the Dogs took a seven-point lead before the Giants levelled scores again at the 26-minute mark of the final term. It took a mark and goal from Jack Macrae – his first major since the opening round of the season – and some cool boundary line play from Jake Stringer, centring the ball to Tory Dickson at full forward, to finally slay the Giants.

A week later the Bulldogs became – in the words of bannerman Danny McGinlay – “BullGODS”, defeating Sydney (again as underdogs) to claim one of the great premierships in VFL/AFL history.

The Bulldogs’ 2016 triumph only served to exacerbate the Giants’ footballing wounds, and they remain raw to this day. It sets up a mouthwatering match-up on Thursday night. With the Dogs aiming to continue their dominant recent record over the Giants –  and premiership hopes – alive, all eyes will be on Marvel Stadium.