Luke Beveridge will preserve his plans for a four-pronged tall ahead group intact regardless of the Western Bulldogs’ disappointing begin in spherical 1.
The Bulldogs coach says Rory Lobb is an opportunity to return from minor ankle surgical procedure in time for Thursday night time’s spherical 3 conflict towards Richmond, though he conceded Lobb and midfielder Adam Treloar (hamstring) would each be racing the clock to be match.
Despite the quartet of Lobb, Aaron Naughton, Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and Sam Darcy solely managing 30 disposals and two targets between them within the heavy loss to the Demons, Beveridge stated the construction was value persisting with as a result of menace they may pose opposition again traces.
“If you look at both the games you’ve seen us play against opposition, they’re never out there together,” he stated.
“If you have a think about what four key forwards, or what three key forwards can do to a team and what pressure that can put on the opposition … there’s a lot of talent there, there’s a couple of young guys who haven’t played a lot of footy, and then there’s some experience now with Aaron and Rory.
“We think they can operate in a really formidable way. It was a great learning curve for some of our guys down there, so we’ll continue to persevere with that.”
The Bulldogs omitted Jason Johannisen and Mitch Hannan for Saturday night time’s sport towards St Kilda, with Rhylee West and Riley Garcia included as small forwards.
Beveridge stated Johannisen would return to halfback, with the 2016 Norm Smith medallist to concentrate on his function as a backup to the Bulldogs’ rebounding defenders.
“We probably did him an injustice in picking him. He needs to play some footy, he needs some time to build up his minutes, whether it’s at state league or AFL,” Beveridge stated.
“He’ll play Casey on Saturday and we’ll probably play him down back.
“We haven’t got as much depth in our backline, so as a failsafe and a backup JJ will probably play a little bit more through that halfback area for Casey in case we need him to come and play there at AFL level.”
The inexperienced St Kilda facet was a possibility for the Bulldogs to impose themselves bodily however in a wise manner on Saturday night time, Beveridge stated.
“You’re hoping players go out with the right combative attitude in a disciplined way,” he stated.
“I won’t be instructing them to go out and take any perceived advantage from their youth and inexperience, but I’ll expect our guys to go out and own their positions and play an adversarial game.
“To ensure that plays on the opposition’s mind more than ours, and ultimately, if you work out who won that battle between us and Melbourne, Melbourne clearly did with that, so we need to start on the right foot.”
Source: www.news.com.au
