Senior coach Luke Beveridge says there a few areas of improvement his side will need to make to remain in touch with the top echelon of teams.
The Bulldogs will be looking to bounce back from a seven-point defeat to Gold Coast when they face Geelong on Saturday night.
Beveridge said scoring more will remain a key focus for the side, while regaining more midfield dominance.
“We’ve got a fair way to go - we’re definitely better in the turnover game than we have been in recent history, but what’s happened too is that we’re probably making less of an impression with the stoppage score differential and clearance aspect,” Beveridge told reporters on Friday morning.
“That’s been a strength of ours for a while, so we’d like to improve that a little bit more and maintain our turnover side of things.
“That will continue to create opportunities for us – we’re not scoring enough, so our intent is to score more, but we can’t turn our mind away from the fundamentals that are going to get us there.”
The Bulldogs will be boosted by the return of Adam Treloar for the Cats’ clash, adding even more class to an already stacked midfield.
“He was pretty keen to play last week, but we needed to make sure and take a little bit of a conservative approach with Ads,” Beveridge said.
“He’ll come into that (midfield) mix, and between him, Marcus (Bontempelli) and Libba, over the course of the year they have been pretty productive.
“The other guys – Caleb (Daniel), Jack Macrae and Bailey Smith bring a bit of depth, so the six of them will play this week but then our challenge is to manage their impact on the game. You can’t fit them all into that inside midfield brigade all the time.”
Friday’s training session also marked a return to VU Whitten Oval for the first time in over 10 months, as the oval was unavailable during the redevelopment.
“We’ve spent a fair bit of time training out on Skinner Reserve in Braybrook. We’ve enjoyed it, and they’ve done a great job with the ground but we’ve been looking forward to coming back to our headquarters, and bowl out on our own oval,” Beveridge said.
“It looks brilliant. I think the boys will have a spring in their step – what that means for the game I don’t know, but for the inconvenience that everyone has put up with, no-one has complained once about it.
“It’s just been something we’ve just had to deal with during the exciting prospect of the redevelopment taking place.
“The first step is getting out on the grass, and then down the track we’ll be able to train in the indoor centre.
“The girls have also started their pre-season, so we’ll co-exist in some confined spaces for a little while but that’s going to be a real pot of colour and excitement. We just have to make sure we work together really well.
“It’s a healthy environment at the moment.”
The Bulldogs will host the Cats from 7.25pm AEST at Marvel Stadium on Saturday night.
