How the Bailey Smith trade has proved to be a win-win, Smith’s midfield time at both clubs compared

It looks like another Geelong steal on paper, but both clubs have come out winners from the Bailey Smith trade. We assess the move and look back at whether Smith was misused at The Kennel.

When Bailey Smith faces his former side in a hotly anticipated blockbuster on Thursday night, he will be coming up against two stars who kept him out of the Western Bulldogs engine room.

The former Dog has been let off the leash at the Cattery, shooting into Brownlow Medal contention as he amasses disposals and metres gained at will, a luxury he didn’t receive at the Bulldogs in recent years.

A comment from Smith after Geelong’s thumping win over Port Adelaide raised eyebrows about his time at Whitten Oval.

Fox Footy boundary rider Ben Dixon asked about the best thing playing under the Geelong method, to which Smith replied: “They celebrate your strengths as a player. And you work on those and you keep exploring those, they are not so worried about what you can’t do well, they try to pump you up for what you can do well and we sort of all complement each other.”

Bailey Smith has shone in his first season at the Cats. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

The comments in isolation highlight the Geelong system and their uncanny knack to bring out the best in players – think Tyson Stengle, Lawson Humphries, Shaun Mannagh and countless other late and rookie picks who have thrived.

But Bulldogs fans would view it as yet another cheeky dig at his former club that adds a little more spice to an already heated battle.

It is a small sample size, but the dominance of Smith in his first season after a serious knee injury begs the question: was Smith misused at The Kennel?

The short answer is no.

The numbers suggest Smith wasn’t afforded the opportunity to maximise his gifts at the Western Bulldogs without a fully-fledged midfield role for the majority of his time at the club.

However, this was because the Bulldogs boasted one of the best engine rooms in the game at that point with Bontempelli, Liberatore, Jack Macrae and Adam Treloar in their prime.

And with the Dogs midfield firing on all cylinders in 2025, the trade has proved to be a win-win for both clubs.

After giving up Smith and Macrae to Geelong and St Kilda during the trade period, the Bulldogs are the highest scoring team from stoppage on record according to Champion Data — averaging 50.1 points per game — and are the best ball movement team since Hawthorn in 2012.

Bailey Smith celebrates a goal in 2022. Picture: Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

Looking back, Smith was one of the top young talents in the game at the Bulldogs, but his performance at that point didn’t warrant sidelining those four quality players.

Bontempelli was rated in the top 10 in the competition in every season from 2020-2023 according to Champion Data and earned three All-Australian blazers.

Macrae recorded back-to-back All-Australians in 2021 – where he led the competition for disposals and was the 13th rated player in the competition — and 2022 (33rd rated player).

Liberatore didn’t receive the same accolades but rated even more highly by Champion Data, viewed as a top 10 player in 2021 (fifth), 2022 (ninth) and 2023 (eighth), and 16th in 2020 under their rating system.

Smith’s biggest midfield season at the Dogs came in his second campaign in 2020, spending 79 per cent of games as a midfielder, 16 per cent as a forward and five per cent on the wing.

That is a more significant on-ball stint than this year, where Smith has spent 75 per cent of his time in the midfield, 11 per cent on a wing – where he acts as another inside midfielder at stoppages – and just 14 per cent of his time forward.

Treloar arrived at the club at the end of 2020 season and Smith’s midfield time dropped to 37 per cent the following year.

Smith still managed to turn heads that season with a stunning finals series, tallying 27 disposals and three goals against Brisbane in the semi-final and adding another four goals and 23 possessions in the preliminary final to spur the Dogs into the decider in Perth.

It was the endurance machine’s highest rated season at the Bulldogs according to Champion Data, rated as the 67th best player in the competition. Not bad for a youngster who hadn’t even celebrated his 21st birthday.

Marcus Bontempelli consoles Bailey Smith after the 2021 AFL Grand Final. Picture: Gary Day/AFL Photos via Getty Images

He was given more chances in the guts in 2022 – 63 per cent midfield time – but didn’t have the same impact, rated as the 197th player by Champion Data. Much of that was because of his errant disposal, averaging 29 possessions and 20 uncontested possesions yet going at just 54 per cent kicking efficiency.

In his final season at the Bulldogs he played 56 per cent of matches as a forward and was the competition’s 249th rated player.

Smith may well have been causing mayhem to the Cats himself on Thursday night had he not succumbed that ill-timed ACL rupture in December 2023.

Macrae was demoted to the substitute and the VFL in 2024 and the damaging Ed Richards was thrown in from a back flank with impressive results.

The red-hot Richards has gone to another level this season and is now the No.1 player in the competition in 2025.

And since round six, four Dogs midfielders sit in the top eight rated players in the competition – Richards at one, Bontempelli at two, second-year talent Joel Freijah at seven and Liberatore at eight.

On the surface, the Cats nabbed a top echelon midfielder for a steal, who is now taking the mickey in a similar fashion to his dominant draft year of 2018.

But six months on from that trade, where the Cats gave up pick 17 and a swap of picks in exchange for blistering ‘Baz’, both teams have come out as winners.

Geelong’s pick shuffle saw them nab medium forward James Polkinghorne, who is leading Cats VFL’s goalkicking and has some promising attributes.

The Dogs secured Matt Kennedy in the deal, who is enjoying a career-best season, and with the first-round pick they selected Cooper Hynes, a high-impact forward midfielder who will be an exciting watch in the future.

Watching Smith renew ties with Bontempelli and Liberatore is going to be a treat. Get the popcorn out.

Originally published as How the Bailey Smith trade has proved to be a win-win, Smith’s midfield time at both clubs compared