By LIAM TWOMEY
WESTERN Bulldogs president Peter Gordon has spoken of the similarities between his club and the Western Region Football League.
Speaking at the WRFL season launch, Gordon was president of the Bulldogs between 1989 and 1996 before returning to the role last year.
He said he was rapt with the progression the organisations had made during his absence.
Both the Bulldogs and the WRFL have undergone name changes and established themselves as the team and league of the western suburbs.
Gordon believes the stage is set for an exciting future.
“The Western Region Football League is set to become the biggest football league in Melbourne in the next 15 years,” he told the crowd.
“Come 2050 Melbourne is likely to have a population of six million people and about a quarter of those are likely to be in the western region of Melbourne, the fastest growing population centre in Australia.
“ … the era in which AFL commissioners were interested in just demolishing the Western Bulldogs and reducing the number of AFL clubs in Melbourne has gone.
“The emphasis has got to be on growing the game, growing support for the game and participation for the game in the Western Region of Melbourne with new communities.
“That is music to my ears.”
As the western suburbs prepare for the population boom in the coming years, Gordon sees all residents and multicultural communities as potential Bulldogs’ supporters.
He then went one step further and challenged anyone who considered themselves a western suburbs person to get behind his club and become a supporter.
“The western region needs to embrace the Bulldogs as its team,” Gordon said.
“Imagine if we lost the Bulldogs in 1989 and all of a sudden Andrew Demetriou and his colleagues thought to themselves, ‘we need a franchise in the western suburbs’.
“The momentum and the desire of people who love the West and feel that their family’s future is in the West to join that franchise and to change teams … would be enormous.
“I think we need to build that sort of parochialism.
“If the western region and living in the western region is part of you and part of your community and part of your family, change teams. Barrack for the Western Bulldogs.”
With the football landscape in the West set for another change next year when the Bulldogs enter a stand-alone VFL team, Gordon is buoyant by what the future holds.
He is also confident of better results on the field for his Dogs.
“The Western Bulldogs Football Club, the Western Region Football League, the Western Jets and in 2014 the creation of a Western Bulldogs team in the VFL are all examples of the way we fuse history and tradition and reach into the western region and contribute to the ever growing vibrancy of the West.
“That is what we are going to do and in the course of it, we are going to get better and better and more competitive on the field as well.”
