As the dust settles on the Western Bulldogs’ 2021 campaign, coach Luke Beveridge has urged his team to build on the momentum it created to reach this year’s Grand Final.

Speaking on the virtual Charles Sutton Medal event on Wednesday night, Beveridge thanked his players and staff for another season of hard work and sacrifice, after falling just short of an incredible Premiership.

The Bulldogs occupied the higher reaches of the ladder for the majority of the season, before ultimately finishing fifth and putting together a stunning three-week finals burst which took them to the last day in September.

“It’s important that we don’t drop the ball here.  We’ve got to continue to flourish,” Beveridge said.

“I used some words at the start of the year to reflect on ‘Man of the Hour’ by Pearl Jam.  That was all about being a destructive force in this competition.

“At times as we’re looking through the rounds, we’re seeing great evidence of that, to be able to beat the better teams on the road, to be able to make it to a grand final under the circumstances we did.

“Now we’ve just got to bang out a few dents, re-collect ourselves and really make sure that we sustain our momentum and our run at it.

“For now we rest, we come back as determined as ever and we look forward to 2022.”

While admitting the Club was still smarting from its Grand Final defeat, Beveridge, ever the optimist, was already looking to the future.

“We need to move on, blank over the rear vision mirror and focus on our future, which is really exciting,” he said.

“It’s been a really tumultuous two years, really.  If you consider how we finished off 2020 and what happened this year with our group, our club, we strung a lot of wins together.

“In difficult times, to see how people have managed their own emotions and continued to look forward and apply themselves…it’s just been an outstanding achievement by our players and our staff to be able to come through in flying colours.”