Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge says a lack of pressure and key position defenders played a role in his side’s failure to overcome the competition’s best.
The Bulldogs failed another test on Sunday and paid the ultimate price, losing to Fremantle and leaving their finals aspirations in the hands of Essendon.
Western Bulldogs finish the home and away season with a 2-8 record against top nine teams.
Beveridge says the Bulldogs’ scoring power also became a weakness against the good teams through the absence of pressure and ability to stop opposition key forwards.
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“I think quite simply it’s being able to sustain the contest, part of that is we haven’t got a great pressure rating,” he said.
“We’ve become a prolific scoring team, even though they scored quite heavily today, and because of that we haven’t been able to stifle the score ability of the opposition.
“Definitely at times the opposition key forwards have got a hold of us, it is an area we need to continue to focus on to improve.
“Work with our current players who play there or perhaps whether or not there’s an opportunity in the market there.
“I think quite simply our contest sustainability and that’s inside and outside the stoppage, it’s been the one thing against more physically robust teams we’ve fallen short for a period of the games and it’s cost us.”
Beveridge backtracked on his choice of words about exploring the market for a key defender, citing it as disrespectful to those on the existing list.
But Western Bulldogs are one of the confirmed clubs to be in the market for Carlton defender Jack Silvagni.
Essendon is another club which has shown interest in Silvagni and it’s the Bombers the Bulldogs need to pull off one of the upsets of the year.
The Bombers travel to Gold Coast on Wednesday for the rescheduled Opening Round match.
Essendon has been plagued with injury this year and its shortage of fit players is why Beveridge has conceded the Bulldogs’ chances.
“We can’t sort of have a woe is us attitude … there just hasn’t been enough upsets for 14 wins to get in,” he said.
“We anticipate it still won’t, the Bombers have got an injury list 20 long and I understand Ken (Hinkley) saying the other night he didn’t think Port would win because their injury list is pretty close as well.
“Essendon beating Gold Coast is as long of a shot as there is, so we anticipate that our season’s probably done and we’ve just got to now support the rest of the boys who have a Footscray finals ahead of us.”
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