Western Bulldogs head coach Nathan Burke says his side will need to rectify the mistakes made against Melbourne if they want to return to the winners list this weekend.

The Bulldogs were outmuscled by the Dees on their home deck, losing the disposals (-66), marks (-24) and inside 50s (-28) to go down by 64 points.

Burke said some costly decisions without the ball in hand is what hurt them the most.

“We didn’t play the way we wanted to play footy. We wanted to come out and be fierce,” Burke told media post-match.

“The first quarter wasn’t too bad, but in the second and third we just made some really dumb decisions. That’s what happens against good teams – you get beaten heavily.

“What really hurt us most was our decision-making without the ball – we know Melbourne want to use the corridor, but when you stand 5m off and allow them to have that corridor, that’s a dumb decision.

“Those decisions were made before we even had the ball, which made us chase.”

The Bulldogs will face St Kilda (Ballarat), West Coast (Perth) and Carlton (IKON Park) in the final month of the home-and-away season.

“It’s time now to be cruel to be kind – they’ve got to learn these lessons, because if we keep making the same mistakes we have over the last three weeks, our next three weeks aren’t going to be fun either,” Burke said.

“If we continue playing dumb football for the next three weeks – they’ll be an ugly three weeks.

“We’ve got to get back to our attention to detail. If we can get that right, it could be a really good three weeks.

“That’s completely in our court.”