I think there are some things he brings to a team that are hard to articulate. It's no coincidence that our season fell apart after we put out that statement regarding him leaving. I don't think these two things are connected via footy though. I think the disharmony he brought to the entire club is more of a factor than his playing ability.
What he did bring football-wise is the ability to execute a three-pass shift from our own half which quite often got us out of trouble. I haven't seen us do that since he left. It was why we lost the Warriors game - we had no territory.
Agreed but we also had to cover for Galvin, that was the problem for us and the problem that Doggies are now having to learn to deal with.
Galvin is dogged and seemingly very confident, and he pops up in all the right places in attack. But also we signed a million-dollar rep and premiership-winning half who was being over-run by Galvin's desire to touch the football 10 times every set.
If you make 200 touches a match then hopefully some of those are nice touches. But also there's a large share of bad passes, kicks dead, wasted tackles, constant tendency to run yourself or crab sideways, the arm-grabs and missed tackles.
For Tigers that's part and parcel of the whole thing, we are capable of those types of errors without Galvin. Our handling has become pretty good but our structure in attack and defence still falls apart under consistent pressure.
But for the Bulldogs, they've built a style based on 17 players who turn up every play. Only really 3 maybe 4 stars in the Dogs side (Crichton, Kikau and Jacob Preston; maybe plus Burton), with the rest being very workman-like. Exemplified for example by the opening props of King and Hughes who are quite average without being bad; Tracey is an admirable but limited fullback and they continue to have to pick nuffies on the wing to partner Kiraz. The backbone of their forward pack are other tough but limited players like Curran, Jaemon Salmon and Kurt Mann.
So Bulldogs 2025 are not used to having a bloke who will throw passes over the sideline and miss key tackles. They are like the Lleyton Hewitt of NRL - a bit small but tenacious, very few unforced errors, a willingness to fight for every point for 80 minutes, no huge weapons but can hurt you with sustained pressure.
Galvin doesn't fit that style, at least not yet. He floats in and out of plays. He gives up quite often especially in defence. He's a classic juniors footballer, he's used to making things happen against lesser opponents by touching the ball all the time and being of a decent size and willingness to get tackled. He still needs to transition into the adult player mindset of choosing his plays more carefully, doing the 1%ers, letting others take control as appropriate. Basically the opposite of a Cooper Cronk-style player who was always more concerned with the long-term strategy of the match and a mindfulness of how play was unfolding and how his team-mates needed to be organised. Galvin is not an organiser, he's a do-er - that's why he'll end up in the backrow eventually.
