While the Western Bulldogs’ recent history at Adelaide Oval falls in their favour, senior coach Luke Beveridge says his side will not rely solely on past results.
The Bulldogs have won four of their last five at the venue – three of those against Port Adelaide – with the most recent encounter a 71-point preliminary final win which booked them a spot in the 2021 Grand Final.
Beveridge said while those wins instil some confidence, his group will need to find new motivation this year.
“Our performances at Adelaide Oval have been really encouraging over the last couple of years, particularly against Port Adelaide,” he told media on Thursday morning.
“Sometimes history can sort of get in the way of your thinking a little bit. Even with Port, they probably haven’t had the start to the year they would’ve liked – same as us – but I think guys like Ollie Wines coming back into the team make a huge difference.
“It’s really important that whatever our mindset has been in the past, we’ve got to find a new freshness and real enthusiasm towards the challenge of playing in front of a parochial home ground.”
The Bulldogs currently sit in 10th position on the ladder, with three wins from seven games.
Beveridge said while they’re not necessarily in the position they would’ve liked to be at this point of the season, Friday night will provide an opportunity to get back on track.
“We’ve been solid enough (this season) – we really only had the one second half against Richmond where we were really disappointed but other than that, we’ve had some little momentum shifts in games against some pretty good sides” he said.
“We’ve still been encouraged by what we’ve done. Now there’s an opportunity to square the ledger for us, so it’ll be a good platform to go into the next round.
“Even last week the game was a little bit unstable for a period of time, but we were able to sort of stabilise it through a couple of monumental involvements from an individual or two.
“As a collective we gained some strength from that, but now the challenge is to get that consistency week-to-week.”
The Bulldogs will confirm their round eight team at 6.20pm AEST tonight.
