I think that is a high exaggeration.
Yes Dogs outbid Tigers in certain situations, but losing out on a signature is not necessarily about being out-manoeuvred, it may simply be a matter of price. I personally think, and I said this in the past 2 seasons, that Dogs are repeating the mistakes the Tigers made when Ivan joined 2017 and we signed several mid-tier players on high salaries. Those salaries weighed us down long-term and the incoming coach had different ideas that he couldn't properly execute until those contracts were shed.
History has proven that Dogs signed a turkey with TPJ, though we have no idea how he may have performed at Tigers, the non-speculative data available says signing TPJ was actually a loss to the Dogs (and a predictable loss).
It remains very much to be seen whether Ciraldo can in fact coach first grade and he's signed to a big long-term deal, i.e. they are stuck with him (same as Tigers with Benji, to be fair).
2023 Dogs have now recruited some very significant players - Burton, Mahoney, Kikau, TPJ, JAC... but it's not currently working out for them in any meaningful progression.
The ace up the sleeve for the Dogs is Phil Gould, who is very shrewd and has a lot of clout in the game, both media and off-football ops. However Phil Gould alone isn't a panacea and he does not create rapid success everywhere he is employed.
On the other hand, Dogs appear to have very shallow juniors depth, and the juniors they have blooded, the likes of Averillo, Biondi-Odo, Alamoti, are alarmingly average. In that regard I think Tigers are advantaged with stronger juniors and a dedicated Pathways Team.
Since Dogs last played finals 2017, their average table position is 13th and ours is 12th. Currently obviously we are last and they are slightly ahead of us 15th, one of their 5 wins coming at our expense (i.e. we win that game and we are both on 4 wins all year).
So are the Dogs ahead of us by available measures of on-field success? Yes certainly, they are marginally ahead. They lost by a slightly less horrific margin last weekend, against an arguably far less dangerous side.
Are they "so far ahead of WT"? No I don't think there's much basis to make such a claim. But as I said, I've been arguing against Bulldogs comparisons for about 2 years now. The Dogs are still yet to do anything particularly impressive with all the strategy changes they've made and money they've spent. I think they have a thoroughly unimpressive team.
Lastly, and this is not the argument you are making, but it's part of the overall conversation about the Bulldogs nonetheless - if fans are measuring success by marginal advantages over the worst team in the comp (us) then they are setting a horrendously low bar. I think Bulldogs fans are a million miles off where they want to be, and they are not thinking about the Tigers when judging progress.
