{"id":539696,"date":"2026-03-14T09:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T09:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/539696\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T09:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T09:50:10","slug":"50-gamer-grateful-to-reach-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/539696\/","title":{"rendered":"50-gamer grateful to reach milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__summary\">\n                Oskar Baker&#8217;s 50-game milestone was worth the wait.\n            <\/p>\n<p>\n                            By Western Bulldogs Media\n                            <\/p>\n<p>Western Bulldogs winger Oskar Baker says bringing up his 50-game milestone was worth the wait.<\/p>\n<p>The 27-year-old was given a second crack at his AFL career when the Dogs signed him via the pre-season supplementary selection period in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Following 15 games at the Dees, he has since strung together 35 games in the red, white and blue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels really good &#8211; obviously I\u2019ve been around a while now so it\u2019s taken a while for me to notch it up,\u201d he said in the rooms post-match.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor myself and my family it probably feels like a bigger milestone than what it actually is, purely because I\u2019ve had to persevere and (show) a lot of resilience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nice to notch it up \u2013 I\u2019m super grateful to the Club for giving me a second crack and regenerate my career.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Baker was one of nine individual goalkickers in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernbulldogs.com.au\/news\/1970899\/afl-match-report-hot-dogs-put-on-a-clinic-against-giants\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dogs\u2019 81-point demolition of the Giants,<\/a> and one of five players to hit the scoreboard on two or more occasions.<\/p>\n<p>While the approach of his second goal \u2013 a snap around the body \u2013 might have made some fans nervous, he delivered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(The footy) wasn\u2019t really coming off that sweet (off a drop punt) in the warm-up, so I thought I\u2019d change it up here,\u201d Baker said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLucky I flushed it because it would\u2019ve been pretty questionable if I\u2019d missed it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s when you know you\u2019re going well \u2013 when you\u2019re sharing the load as a team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNaughty competed all day, Darc and Westy were really good \u2013 so many others went through there as well and a few blokes hit the scoreboard so that\u2019s really pleasing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Overall however, Baker said he was most proud of the team\u2019s ability to back up last week\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFun is probably a good way to describe it, but probably more proud of the boys,\u201d he said when asked how to sum it up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously we had a very good win last week against the reigning premiers up there and we were on a high all week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe knew if we played the same footy that we did last week that would hold us in really good stead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m just really proud of the boys to back it up again today and get a really solid win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Bulldogs will next face Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on Friday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oskar Baker&#8217;s 50-game milestone was worth the wait. By Western Bulldogs Media Western Bulldogs winger Oskar Baker says&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-539696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539696","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=539696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}