When you sit down pre-season to do your AFL ladder prediction, you work on the assumption everyone has their best cattle on the park, even though that seldom happens. But sometimes you don't even have that luxury.
You couldn't make any reasonable pronouncements pre-season about Western Bulldogs' likely fortunes in 2025 without considering an injury list as notable for the quality of players on it as much as the quantity.
With relentless speculation about coach Luke Beveridge's position already the uncomfortable backdrop, the Dogs were going to have to make do early on without three of the top four in last year's best and fairest - skipper Marcus Bontempelli, Adam Treloar, and Liam Jones, plus critical small forward Cody Weightman, and a Norm Smith medallist in Jason Johannisen.
The Bulldogs had already tested the pundits' patience enough in recent years to have them critically on the nose.
And the key injuries were enough for many sceptics to leave them out of serious consideration even for a finals spot, a judgement only reinforced by the subsequent news about Jamarra Ugle-Hagan's non-appearance, then, only a fortnight ago, what might have been the catastrophic loss of potential superstar Sam Darcy.
That's the thing about Beveridge's team, though. It manages to pleasantly surprise more often than it occasionally unexpectedly disappoints. And having negotiated the worst of its manpower issues, it is now arguably in as good a position at this stage of a season as it has ever been in the coach's 11-year reign.
I gave them one last chance pre-season, tipping them to finish top four, having crossed fingers they could at least hang in there until the troops returned. But the Dogs have done plenty more than just hang tough.
It's not just the 5-3 record now and sixth spot on the ladder. It's even the losses -- to Collingwood by a kick, Fremantle in Perth, and reigning premier Brisbane after having led the Lions by 39 points, which speak to a consistent competitiveness in 2025 which hasn't previously necessarily been a trademark.
It's the adapting with relative comfort to sometimes dramatically changed circumstances and on the run.
Consider, for example, the potentially fatal ramifications of the perhaps season-long loss of Darcy as well as Ugle-Hagan, the Bulldogs' leading two goalkickers last year, not to mention another goalkicker in Weightman for half the season. Indeed until Bontempelli's return, that was four of the Dogs' top five goalkickers who were scratchings.
Yet the Dogs, ranked No. 2 for scoring last year, are still occupying that position, a cast of smaller types having stepped up to fill the void, Rhylee West, Lachie McNeil, Ryley Sanders, Matt Kennedy, and James Harmes all averaging at least a goal per game.
Whether Beveridge was okay with their departures or not, the loss of three experienced hands in one hit in Bailey Smith, Caleb Daniel, and Jack Macrae could really have knocked around the Dogs' midfield cohesion.
But the value of the flexibility and depth which has always been a cornerstone of Beveridge's coaching mantra has seldom been more obvious than so far this season in moves like the inclusion of Jedd Busslinger in a key defence post ahead of Jones.
Or in the greater support now around the superb Tom Liberatore, the likes of Joel Freijah now taking the path Ed Richards took before him, the midfielder superb again against the Power, and the path maybe Sanders will take after him.
Buku Khamis has shown he can go forward with effect. Kennedy has been the hard-bodied, gritty mid the Dogs may have lacked since the departure of Josh Dunkley. McNeill and Laitham Vandermeer both seem to have taken the next step, now more than just placeholders for the injured players from a best 23.
Some might call them role players, but if they are, they're playing roles which are clearly becoming more significant.
And thus, the return of Bontempelli for the past three games, and in Saturday's thrashing of Port Adelaide, that of Adam Treloar, haven't been so much the responses to a desperate SOS from the remainder of the Dogs, but cream on the cake, extra thick and rich cream at that.
And the cherry on top? That might well have been Tim English's game, surely one of the best of his now 139-game career, the big man smashing former teammate Jordon Sweet, dominating the hit-outs and recording equal personal bests of 27 disposals and three goals.
That trio rounds out a midfield group as good as any in the competition when all are present and fit. And while the defence is yet to reach the heights of 2024, when it conceded fewer points than any rival, the Dogs are getting there again, their two stingiest performances of the season coming in the wins over St Kilda a fortnight ago and Port.
There's sometimes been something a little perverse about the Bulldogs under Beveridge in that they've seemed to need the odds stacked against them to deliver, and conversely perhaps got ahead of themselves just when things were looking good.
But as the pressure builds on the club to re-sign Beveridge sooner than later, remarkable in itself given how precarious his position looked not all that long ago, perhaps finally he has a playing group mature enough to make the most of the hard work it has done to keep itself in the frame.
We're only one-third of the way through the season and already the Dogs appear to have seen off without too much consequence the worst fate has had to deal. Just what they might be capable of with fortune running their way is a tasty proposition indeed for their fans.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.