• Nine things we learned from round three

BRAVO to the Western Bulldogs and Hawthorn for the game of the season to date at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

The Hawks proved once again what Peter McKenna has been saying for 30 years – you can never write them off.

But it is the Bulldogs who will heed the lessons from this one. They don't play the Hawks again during the home and away season, sadly for us, but they likely will in the finals where the venue will be the MCG.

Here's what's required to get the job done against the competition benchmarks next time around.

• Who fired for your club in this weekend's state leagues?

1. Don't leave too much to too few
The Dogs reeled a five-goal deficit midway through the second term to lead by 18 points in the final term. It was a momentum swing almost entirely driven by contested ball, with the Dogs gaining the ascendancy late in the second term and having a whopping 31 more contested possessions and 10 more clearances in the third.

Alastair Clarkson could never recall his side being on the receiving end of such a monstering in one quarter of footy.

But it was largely based on the work of two players. Caleb Daniel put the clamps on Sam Mitchell, while Luke Dahlhaus was excellent for the Dogs throughout.

WATCH: The dramatic final two minutes of Hawks-Dogs

Still, they pushed the best team in the competition to within three points without major contributions from 2015 perennial match-winners Marcus Bontempelli, who only had 11 disposals, and Jake Stringer, well beaten by Ben Stratton. Mitch Wallis and Tom Liberatore were also relatively quiet.

If that group are this quiet against the Hawks next time around, the Dogs probably won't get anywhere near as close.

2. Seasoned players must show leadership without Bob Murphy
The Dogs need to pick themselves up, and quickly. The injured Murphy is the defensive quarterback of the side. All Australian Easton Wood missed on Sunday with hamstring soreness and slots right back in and late inclusion Joel Hamling stays in the side if the Dogs want to keep their defensive structure.

But equally important, Murphy is their spiritual leader and that's where the Dogs need a pick-me-up. We're looking at you Matty Boyd, you Dale Morris, you Jordan Roughead and you, Easton Wood. Get the team back on the bike and get it going again.

3. Keep the faith with Tom Boyd
Quiet for three quarters, Boyd stepped up in the final quarter as the game started to slip away. He presented repeatedly, took some grabs and missed a couple of shots, but then threaded through a beauty from general play early in time-on to keep the Dogs in the contest.

Slowly but surely, he is cementing his place in the best 22. The Bulldogs didn't get the win, but it was through no fault of Boyd who ended the game one of his club's better players. This was a test of character and he deserves a pass.

4. Don't give good sides a five-goal start
The Dogs were shell-shocked early. They had played the opening eight quarters of the season against Fremantle and St Kilda entirely on their terms. But they were on the back foot from the very start in this one, and as well as they played to get back into the game, they spent plenty of petrol tickets in order to get there. 

The Saints' revival

Saturday at the MCG was the win St Kilda needed to have and not just because of the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the 1966 premiership team that preceded it.

The Saints were humbled by the Western Bulldogs the week before, kept to five goals by a team whose own rebuild is proceeding at such a pace that the Saints were starting to lag badly behind.

There might have been few expectations about St Kilda this year, but last week's performance was so poor that it demanded some sort of response. In front of 50,000 fans at a sun-dappled MCG, the response came in the form of the best win in Alan Richardson's 47 games in charge.

With Nick Riewoldt, Paddy McCartin and Dylan Roberton all watching injured on the bench, the short-sticked Saints kicked six goals to one in a powerful third quarter to blow the game open.

It was a fabulous display of gut-running and clinical finishing. It offered a glimpse of what the next premiership contending St Kilda side might be and if the template is a bunch of elite midfielders that run hard both ways and with quality forwards to finish off the work – McCartin was enjoying his best game at AFL level before being concussed – then the Saints will keep the scoreboard and the turnstiles ticking over.

It was a famous win against the odds. It was a brave move by the Saints to forfeit an Etihad Stadium home game to play the Pies on their home deck, but the gamble paid off big time and the likes of Jack Steven, Jack Billings, Jack Newnes and Mav Weller showed they had a liking for the big stage. And Leigh Montagna rolled back the years to the times when big MCG games were the norm, not the exception for St Kilda.

Richardson noted that the bar would be now raised at St Kilda as a result of Saturday's win. And so it should.

Is this the new Carey v Jako?

The lament of the modern game is the lack of the great one-on-one match-ups that we anticipate all week then get to enjoy on the weekend. Not since Wayne Carey and Glen Jakovich have we been able to circle a date in the fixture and look forward to two gladiators taking each other on.

But if the events on Sunday at Blundstone Arena demonstrate anything, then we might have Todd Goldstein versus Max Gawn to look forward to for several years.

Goldstein kicked five goals in North's highly-entertaining five-point win over Melbourne, but in general ruck play, Gawn put on a master-class with 63 hit-outs, plus two goals of his own.

Watch: The thrilling last two minutes of Roos-Dees

Gawn set himself at the start of the year to become the No.1 ruckman in the competition. It was bold and it was brazen and yes, you would still have the North man comfortably ahead, but the ambition was great and on Sunday, Gawn embraced the challenge and backed his words with deeds.

As for the Demons, it was a spirited afternoon. They spotted North a seven-goal head start in the opening term and it looked calamitous there for a time, but such was the gale blowing straight down the ground at Blundstone, they were on level pegging by midway through the second term.

It was a fine response after last week's limp effort against Essendon. Jesse Hogan with 19 touches, seven marks and three goals was much, much better. Some wiser heads at the death and like the Saints, the Demons may have had their own famous win to enjoy.

What would a Ross rebuild look like?

For a while there on Saturday night at Domain Stadium, things were back on Fremantle's terms. As in the Fremantle of 2012-15.

Scoring was tight, defences were on top and it required major industry and creativity for midfielders of both sides to work their way through the mass of bodies at stoppages and through the opposition backlines.

But when the game opened up, it was West Coast that emerged on top, returning to the winners' list after a poor outing against Hawthorn last week, while the Dockers stumbled to yet another loss.

At 0-3 you can nearly put a fork through Fremantle for this year. No team since the competition expanded to 18 teams has made the finals after a 0-3 start and for the Dockers to start their climb up the ladder, it will be without skipper David Mundy who will miss a few weeks with a calf injury, and ruckman Aaron Sandilands for who knows how long after being crunched in the back by Nic Naitanui.

It was left to Michael Johnson to ruck against the Naitanui-Scott Lycett combination. Johnson battled on, but the situation was pretty much hopeless for the Dockers and you have to think we are edging closer to the time when Lyon, armed with a five-year contract, starts basing his team selection around what is best for Fremantle in the medium to long-term.

This is new ground for Lyon, whose time at both St Kilda and Fremantle till now has been marked by teams with some sort of premiership aspiration, save perhaps for his first squad with the Saints in 2007.

Lyon likely won't publicly change his tune until the mathematicians have ruled a line through Fremantle for the season. But he must believe a flag is in the offing with Fremantle – otherwise he wouldn't have committed for another five years – and how he sets about achieving it will be fascinating.

Other observations

1. The AFL has an Essendon problem. The Bombers' win last week over Melbourne was high on entertainment value, but Friday night at Adelaide Oval offered more transparency as to where the Bombers are at and it was obviously apparent that against even half-decent opposition, they'll struggle. This year's fixture suggests the AFL had no idea Essendon would be hit this hard by the WADA appeal, and already a few weeks out, both the Anzac Day and Dreamtime matches hold less appeal than usual. We also get the Bombers on a Friday night against (groan) Hawthorn. Prime-time footy is supposed to offer the best teams going hard against each other, not for the young Bombers, as John Worsfold explained on Friday night to experience their "great learning opportunities". You bet if the AFL had the ability, it would be tweaking the fixture for the rest of the year to take the Bombers "off Broadway" every opportunity it could.

2. Jeremy Cameron has already cost his side one win this year courtesy of his foolish four-match suspension out of the NAB Challenge. And you could mount a case on Saturday night that his absence cost Greater Western Sydney any real chance of snapping their SCG hoodoo. The Sydney Swans prevailed by 25 points in a bruising encounter, but their backline had all the answers and Giants coach Leon Cameron worked the whiteboard furiously in an unsuccessful bid to create the right sort of match-ups. The Giants still have to overcome Port Adelaide next Sunday in Canberra before their No.1 forward finally returns and he can't come back quickly enough. The G-Men have kicked just 31 goals in three games, which plainly, isn’t anywhere near good enough. As for the Swans, they were terrific and the Saturday night clash with the Crows at Adelaide Oval should be a beauty. It will also be their first real test for the season.

3. Once upon a time, Tom Lynch's decision to return home on the eve of a game to be at the birth of his second child, would have sent the talkback callers into a frenzy. Now we just nod our heads and wish him and his family all the best. Not that the Crows missed him. The Great Entertainers comfortably handled Richmond at Etihad Stadium on Saturday as they continued to press their top four credentials. With seven multiple goalscorers and nine goalkickers altogether, the Crows are an attacking force. It helped that a succession of Tiger turnovers kept gifting them the ball. At 1-2, Richmond is tied with Collingwood as the disappointment of the season to date and with West Coast in Perth on Friday night, things don't get any easier. At least skipper Trent Cotchin had a good outing with 32 disposals, after a week when his leadership was unfairly put under the spotlight.

4. We understand teams need to evolve and that Collingwood needs a changing of the guard through the midfield, but why was skipper Scott Pendlebury playing across half-back on Saturday when the Saints went on their six-goal surge? Perhaps his exposure to the engine room needs restricting while he nurses sore ribs and with 27 disposals and two goals he was more than serviceable, but the temptation must have been there for an earlier switch to the midfield as the Saints were blowing open a game in which the half-time margin was just two points.

5. Scoring was back up marginally, with an average of 88.3 points a team, compared to last week's 85.6. But two of Sunday's games were fantastic, but with contrasting scorelines. The Kangas and the Demons combined for 267 points in Hobart and both sides were seemingly kicking them from everywhere. The Hawks and Dogs combined for 183 points, but goals in the first half were really hard to come by. As the teams tired in the second half, the scoring opened up, which is exactly what the AFL was hoping for in 2016.

6. Another sign that footy is smashing it. It has taken just three rounds for attendance figures to climb past the one million mark. This weekend's footy was watched by 298,737 has seen crowd figures reach and the 1,011,777 aggregate crowd so far is the highest mark in the game's history after three rounds. Attendance figures will continue to soar if games like the Kangas-Demons and Dogs-Hawks become the norm.

7. Adelaide has played eight games at Etihad Stadium since 2014 and Richmond only seven. The Tigers didn't gripe much about it in the lead-up to Saturday's 'home' game there against the Crows, but they can't have been delighted to see erstwhile Etihad tenant St Kilda playing a home game at the MCG on Saturday, notwithstanding the special occasion that it was for the Saints.

8. James Sicily. What a clutch goal there at the end to put the Hawks ahead for good at the end, particularly with the extra wait while Murphy was being attended to. They've found another one.