Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge is expecting his team’s clash with the Giants to be a battle in Ballarat.
The Bulldogs claimed victory in their earlier round eight encounter at Manuka Oval, but having not faced captain Toby Greene or in-form defender Sam Taylor, will be keeping a close eye on them at Mars Stadium tomorrow.
“Sam didn’t play against us last time, but we’ve seen some growth in some of their other backmen,” Beveridge told media at VU Whitten Oval on Friday morning.
“We’ll back our guys in. It’s all to do with distribution and kicking to advantage with our forward movement and the flow of the game. If it becomes a situation where (Sam) is just reading it better than our guys and his intercept game is too strong then we might need to do something about it.
“Toby’s another one that didn’t play against us last time - he had one really big outing when he kicked seven up there against us, so we’ll need to make sure we account for him.
“He’s such an influential match-winning type of player, and now the captain of their footy club so he obviously leads by example on the field.
“We’ll need to make sure we minimise his impact as much as we can.”
While the once fiery Dogs-Giants rivalry has somewhat simmered in recent outings, both teams enter round 20 with a lot at stake in terms of ladder positioning and finals aspirations.
Beveridge said whether that adds any fuel to the fire remains to be seen, but is expecting a battle nonetheless.
“The honesty of our boys have been difficult to beat in the contest. Occasionally we’ve dropped our guard with some momentum shifts here and there but other than that we’ve been a team who have challenged most teams we’ve played this year,” he said.
“(The Giants) have strung these games together - it’s no great surprise because they were running teams pretty close.
“We’re expecting it to be a contest, as we always do against the Giants.
“There’s a really strong and healthy history of rivalry between the two clubs – that varies from player to player and it comes and goes, but it will be a good battle in Ballarat.
“There’s always some commonalities – it’s whether you pick (that rivalry) up off previous outings.
“Whether it came out in the game in Canberra I’m not sure, so we’ll wait and see.”
Tickets to the Bulldogs-Giants clash in Ballarat are on sale here.
