Western Bulldogs senior coach Nathan Burke says he cannot fault the playing group’s never-say-die attitude, despite going down to Geelong by the slimmest of margins at the weekend.

The Bulldogs kicked the last three goals of their round six clash at Mars Stadium to fall just one point short of a comeback.

Burke said it was a slight lapse during the middle of the game that ultimately hurt his side most.

“I absolutely love the way this group of women fight it out – in four seasons of coaching, they’ve never turned their toes up once,” he told media post-match.

“To come back like they did – against the Cats which are a good team and chucked a lot of numbers back – you’ve got to love the way they fight out the game every single week.

“Against competent teams, you can’t play the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes with a bit of a snooze in the middle. I think that’s unfortunately what we did.

“We started off a bit fumbly when the heat was on – but our intensity in that first 10 minutes was great. We certainly controlled the last 10 minutes too.

“It was just that bit in the middle that wasn’t the way we want to play the game.”

From 33 inside 50s, the Bulldogs only had 13 scoring shots at 39% disposal efficiency – compared to the Cats’ 15 shots from 25 forward forays at 60% efficiency.

“Our tackling inside our defensive 50 wasn’t good – they slipped a couple of tackles and got free kicks in front of goal, which helps their efficiency,” Burke said.

“I don’t think we got any of those. We had to earn every single goal that we got.

“I think we had 17 tackles inside forward 50 – our ground balls has been a problem for us over the last couple of weeks, so I thought that was better this week.

“We butchered a couple of forward entries in that second quarter in particular, so if we had been a bit cleaner there it might have been a different story.”

The Bulldogs will next head to Casey Fields to take on Melbourne this Sunday for the Hampson-Hardeman Cup.