David Mundy

As I still have a "bulldogs" tag on this journal I figured I would jot down some thoughts.

At the end of the 2003 AFL season the Western Bulldogs and their rookie head coach Peter Rohde were in "Win Now" mode, a top 16 finish giving them the confidence that a few shrewd trades would allow them to compete with the likes of Brisbane, Essendon, Collingwood and Port Adelaide for the 2004 premiership. With this in mind they traded their second round draft pick (19) to Fremantle for versatile utility Steven Koops.

Koops played 11 games for the Western Bulldogs, averaging 10 disposals and contributing to two wins in a campaign that saw them finish 14th.

With the pick they received, Fremantle drafted David Mundy.

I've thought about this trade occasionally over the past nineteen years. Imagine if a more practical David Smorgon had chosen to continue the rebuild in 2003 and picked up Mundy. How would the 2008-2010 Bulldog's preliminary finals have gone with Mundy in the midfield going head to head with Lenny Hayes? Would the injury curse of 2006 have seen him as the sixth Bulldog to go down with an ACL that year? How would Mundy have celebrated in 2016 with Picken, Matthew Boyd and Dale Morris? How would Mundy's cool head have helped settle his team mates in 2022 after four straight goals leading into half time by the Dockers in an Elimination Final?

Perhaps this was one of those sliding door moments, where the bottom three finish in 2004 - giving the Bulldogs a priority pick (Ryan Griffen, ultimately traded to GWS for Tom Boyd's kicked a goal, Boyd's kicked a goal) - worked out in the end. The fact that Mundy spent all of 2004 in the WAFL, and assuming he devloped with Williamstown in the same way, means the Bulldog's drafting of Griffen would have occurred regardless, thus bringing little comfort.

There have been worse trades in AFL history, but a basement dwelling team trading the first pick of the second round for an AFL legend who would go on to 374+ games must surely be in the top ten at a position similar to where David Mundy will end up in the all time games list. And there is a certain sense of irony in the fact that, in 2022, Mundy's poise, experience, and contested possessions were precisely what Fremantle needed to inflict another failed season on the Bulldogs. The only solace for their fans now would be knowing that in 2023, nearly two decades later, the last traces of the Peter Rhode era are over.

Note - This entry is slightly unfair on Steven Koops, whose injuries forced him to retire before the 2005 season. (Although that was not before he joined the AFL Indigenous All-Stars for a final game in Darwin against the Bulldogs in February 2005, where he and his team mates beat the Dogs by 28 points, 12.19 (91) to 10.3 (63))