Western Bulldogs captain Ellie Blackburn says the team is hopeful of securing a finals berth tomorrow night against Carlton, rather than waiting for other results to go their way.

A win against the Blues under Friday night lights at IKON Park will mean the Dogs qualify for their first finals series since the 2018 flag, while a loss will see them relying on the Gold Coast-GWS match on Sunday evening.

“We don’t want to sit around until 7pm on Sunday night waiting to know if we’ll be playing finals or not - hopefully we can secure it on the Friday night,” Blackburn said on The W Show this week.

“From our point of view, we know we have a really important job at hand - that’s to win a game of footy against Carlton.

“We know what they can produce and how good of a side they can be, but for us it’s about playing consistent four-quarter footy and building a hell of a lot of confidence moving forward.”

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The Bulldogs currently sit in eighth position with six wins and three losses, and will enter the final-round clash off a two-game winning streak.

While Blackburn conceded losing is never ideal, those defeats through rounds 5-7 couldn’t have come at a better time for the young Pups.

“You obviously hate losing, but it was probably a nice time to lose a couple of games - if you have to,” she said.

“I think it allowed us to reset and re-focus on what we were doing, and to bring our group together.

“It was almost a bit of a reality check as to where we’re at, so for us I think it’s to remember that we’ve got to be really competitive against those top-eight sides, and can’t be dropping those games the way we were.

“We felt like we had really good games particularly against Geelong and North Melbourne – we thought they were really competitive. It was probably more the Melbourne game that we got caught out a fair bit.

“From that perspective, their ability to take away your game, their incredible fitness levels and their unified team and skill level all works really well. That’s something we’ve noticed and identified in these top eight teams, and particularly the ones we’ve come up against.”

The Bulldogs and Blues will go head-to-head from 6.10pm AEDT tomorrow night.