Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge has rubbished recommendations to ship star ahead Aaron Naughton in defence as a technique to increase their AFL premiership credentials.
But Beveridge concedes the Bulldogs have to search out methods to spice up their scoring energy following final week’s seven-point loss in opposition to Gold Coast.
Fox Footy analyst David King insists Naughton ought to swap down again to bolster the defence with the Dogs seemingly blessed with tall ahead choices in Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and Rory Lobb.
But Beveridge stated the Bulldogs had been greater than settled down again with resurgent Liam Jones in All-Australian rivalry in his return to the Whitten Oval.
Naughton has booted 21 targets this season, however has managed simply three from his final three matches.
The 23-year-old began his profession as a key defender earlier than efficiently switching up ahead in 2019.
“So he’s (Naughton) kicked (more than) 100 goals over the last three years, and he’s probably been our most instrumental key forward, but he (King) suggested he goes back?,” Beveridge stated on Friday.
“The thing is that we’ve got a lot of depth with our key backs and we’ve been pretty happy.
“Aaron’s been wonderful participant for us, and he often will get the opposition’s finest defender so we have got to do our greatest to assist him play his finest footy.
“He’s not going behind the ball any time soon.”
Despite sitting sixth on the ladder, the Bulldogs are ranked thirteenth in assault this season, behind groups outdoors the top-eight like Sydney, GWS and the Suns.
“We’re just scoring enough,” Beveridge lamented.
“Our intent is to score more. But we can’t turn our mind away from the fundamentals that are going to get us there and we still got a fair bit of work to do.”
The Bulldogs will host Geelong at Marvel Stadium on Saturday evening with the determined Cats 5-6 and on a three-game dropping streak.
Key midfielder Adam Treloar will return to face Geelong after lacking three weeks with a hamstring damage.
Beveridge conceded it will be difficult to suit Treloar again into the midfield combine with Marcus Bontempelli, Tom Liberatore, Bailey Smith, Jack Macrae and Caleb Daniel.
“All six of them will play this week and then that’s our challenge to manage their impact on the game,” he stated.
“We can’t fit them all into that inside midfield brigade all the time so they’ll need to share some responsibilities here and there.”
Geelong coach Chris Scott just isn’t panicking regardless of the Cats’ precarious place of their premiership defence.
“We haven’t played well enough, we’ve made a few errors in the last month we’d like to have back but that’s AFL footy,” he stated on Friday.
“We’ll make errors over the back end of the season, we’ll just try to mitigate them or at least make them educated errors.
“But as quickly as you begin enjoying the sport of, ‘if it does not work out this week we’re in bother’, I simply suppose that is a mindset of a loser, and that is not us.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
