Western Bulldogs midfielder Lachie Hunter is hopeful the team’s recent finals experience will be an advantage in this weekend’s Elimination Final against Fremantle.

Hunter has played 11 finals since debuting in 2013 - five of those being sudden-death elimination finals. 

He said he hopes the recent finals experience will benefit the group over Fremantle.

“It’s a really interesting mindset - as soon as you get the result, your mindset instantly flicks to ‘we really have a chance at this’,” Hunter told RSN on Thursday morning.

“That’s where your mind goes straight away, and maybe that’s because we’ve been here before and have done it via the elimination final path.

“Hopefully that is a little bit of a strength over Freo – they’ve had a really good season.

“We don’t have to look too far back though – we had a really good game against Melbourne, and have beaten three out of the top four sides this year.

“Freo did get us, as did Geelong obviously but we have played well against the teams right up the top which is always something you want coming into finals.”

Hunter hopes the result this time around will be different to that in round 21, when they went down to the Dockers by 17 points at Marvel Stadium.

“They played a really uncontested marking game from the start. They possessed the ball a lot – I think they had about 130 or 140 uncontested marks which is off the charts,” he said.

“They got a lot of bang for buck going inside 50 too – but we didn’t make the most of our chances when we had the momentum.

“I’m not sure if the game will look exactly the same as how it did with that uncontested mark game, but hopefully it takes a bit of a different look and we can get our way. 

“We’ll go in with a good attitude – we just can’t wait.”

The Bulldogs and Dockers will do battle from 6.10pm AWST (8.10pm AEST) at Optus Stadium on Saturday night.