Slipping Bulldogs confident of regaining AFL form

Anna Harrington | June 10, 2023

Coach Luke Beveridge concedes the Western Bulldogs have slipped away from the AFL’s “upper rung” after three losses on the spin.

But he is confident his charges can make the adjustments to again thrust themselves back among the top teams.

Friday night’s 22-point loss to Port Adelaide follows defeats to Gold Coast and Geelong and leaves the Bulldogs in danger of slipping out of the eight – after they’d previously won five consecutive games.

“The games have probably swung on decision and skill at times and ours has been marginal and it’s hurt us,” Beveridge told reporters.

“The series of games we won, some of those games pretty tight and we were able to just do enough right. 

“So it’s not like we’re absolutely shooting the lights out but the area that we had improved significantly was probably our defensive action and our team defence.

“And over the last few weeks, we’ve been challenged by three pretty good teams and we’ve worn it. 

“So it just means that we’re below the the upper rung at the moment and we’ve got to keep pursuing trying to get up there. 

“You can improve in this game in a very short space of time and I believe in our guys and I think we can find those increments.” 

One of those areas is defending from turnover, after the Power scored 62 points from the Bulldogs losing possession.

Beveridge believed some instability down back, amid injuries, had contributed.

“We’ve just got to support the boys and keep educating them and look for the improvements and press on,” he said.

The Bulldogs have a nine-day break before facing North Melbourne.

Beveridge didn’t indicate he planned to rest any younger players but said the Bulldogs would monitor youngster Artie Jones, who didn’t have a touch.

“They’ve got a break coming up. Nine days is a good time,” he said.

“We’ll get some training in, we’ll refresh a little bit but we have to really focus on the Kangaroos and see what we can do there.

“Tonight we’re talking about turnover and Port’s ability to score, but I felt like our our chemistry in our forward line and our ball movement at times was encouraging. 

“It’s just that we turned some blatant ones over through cough-ups in that back half of the game that gave Port too many looks in open field. 

“So we’ll look at some positives, but we’ll absolutely focus on finding the things that we need to implement to climb.”