Luke Beveridge says pressure for spots coming from the VFL side could see the Bulldogs field a slightly different line-up for Friday night’s clash against Port Adelaide.

While the AFL boys suffered a 22-point loss to the Cats last round, it was the opposite result for the reserves, who inflicted a 58-point triumph.

Beveridge said he it was pleasing to see some senior-listed players put their best feet forward for selection, particularly to cover the absence of Ed Richards (hamstring).

“Our Footscray team had a good win against the Cats out in Werribee, and we hadn’t had much momentum at state-league level,” he told reporters on Thursday morning.

“A few of those boys have put the pressure on (for spots), so there’ll be a few changes. The obvious one being Ed Richards going out.

“Ed’s a loss - he was having an influential year. Both JJ and Ed were playing those higher defensive roles most of the time, so what it does is create opportunity for others.

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“Our blend and mixture of our back-end is in a state of flux all the time at the moment. Our key defensive posts have been injured and come in and out of the side, and there’s a bit of form analysis there where we’ve got to get the blend right – so our back seven will work together, but it will be a different back seven again this week.”

Beveridge said striking the right balance between defending and scoring is something they have been working on, and hope to execute effectively against the in-form Power.

“My philosophy has always been just to have a really healthy blend and focus on your defensive disciplines, which feeds your scope to score. There’s different iterations of that mindset,” he said.

“Some of us might say all that matters is defence, and that if you get that right you’ll score enough – but then on the flipside you might get those who really want to score and take a lot of risks offensively.

“I think we’re defending better, but the efficiency piece is the never-ending struggle. If you put too much pressure on yourself, you can go even further south.

“It’s the awareness piece – I think we’ve got enough skill and capability in our team to be able to match the template rather than change the template. 

“We didn’t like our last quarter (against Geelong) but we’ve run into a period where we’re leaving some score out there due to what we’re doing and not doing with the football.

“We train it every week, and we hope to get on top of it and improve it.

“Hopefully Port have less opportunity off our turnover than what we gave Geelong last week. Ultimately if we create as many opportunities, we’ve just got to take them and that’ll matter.”

The Bulldogs-Power match will also coincide with the Club’s 140-year anniversary.