\n The veteran defender is one game shy of his 200th AFL appearance.\n <\/p>\n
\n By Western Bulldogs Media\n <\/p>\n
Western Bulldogs defender Rory Lobb is practicing patience this off-season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old finished the 2025 campaign on 199 games, leaving his double-century milestone match for the new year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI get to sit on 199 for a bit…hopefully I can hit the ground running and play 200 in Round 1 next year,\u201d Lobb said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been such an amazing journey through three clubs. They say that when you first come into the league it goes quick \u2013 I feel like it\u2019s gone quick in a way but I feel like I\u2019ve got so much football still left in me.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel like I\u2019m coming towards the end (of my career) yet even though I am getting a little bit older.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve still got at least two years left at this football club, and I\u2019d love to play 100 games at the Dogs. That would be exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lobb\u2019s 2025 campaign was an impactful one, averaging 12.2 disposals, 6.2 spoils and 2.4 intercept marks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said having had a full pre-season in the backline paid dividends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels natural now \u2013 having a full season and pre-season as a backman,\u201d Lobb said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously it was a pretty disappointing finish to the season but overall I feel like I was really growing in that role and I\u2019m looking to improve next year for sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t miss a game\u2026I think it\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve done that in about 10 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked with Daniel Pratt over the off-season on getting my positioning right. I feel like I went a little bit too far in the defensive aspect throughout pre-season and found the balance early in the year of whether I intercept or spoil.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously I had a fair few spoils throughout the year but it\u2019s just about learning to read the pressure \u2013 whether to sit assertive or take back shoulder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve still got a long way to go in that sense – there were some games I did get done out the back for being a little bit too aggressive \u2013 but I\u2019m looking to figure out that positioning in games where I can read it really quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lobb looked forward to continuing to work closely with some of the team\u2019s emerging defenders like James O\u2019Donnell.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting that synergy between the backs has been really good. I feel like we were really connected as a group. Us backs like to say we\u2019re the most connected of any line,\u201d Lobb said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWatching JOD grow into his role\u2026I feel like he played some influential footy over the year, and I\u2019m sure he\u2019s going to go into the off-season and pre-season, work on his game and come back even better.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like a tight-knit group and we stayed really connected throughout the year. There were a few times when things weren\u2019t really going our way but we managed to stem the flow and stay in games.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The veteran defender is one game shy of his 200th AFL appearance. By Western Bulldogs Media Western Bulldogs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-265968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}