Western Bulldogs head coach Nathan Burke says he has never felt more proud of his side than on Friday night against Adelaide.
While things didn’t go the Bulldogs’ way on-field, Burke lauded the resilience and never-say-die attitude of his team – particularly considering they were three players down before half-time.
“I was extremely proud of them. To be three players down (in the) second quarter – Adelaide average 64 points, so to keep them to 59 points was enormous,” Burke said post-match.
“The top team playing the bottom team without three players and in perfect conditions – you probably think they’re kicking 90+ points.
“The fact that we kept them to 59, against certain adversity other than the injuries we were facing at times – I’ve been proud of them a lot, but never as proud as what I was tonight.”
With three weeks to go – and two of those to come at home at VU Whitten Oval – Burke said the aim has not been lost.
“We still want to win. We’re still aiming to win games absolutely,” he said.
“Every time we go out there, that’s our aim – to win games and give our supporters something to cheer about.
“We’ve got a bit of a mantra that we’re doing it for this internal group, so they can get together and celebrate and get some reward for their really hard efforts, but we’re also doing it for the people who support us.
“Whether that’s a close family member or our wider Bulldogs family – we want to give them something to cheer about as well.
“We’ve spoken long and hard about what we’ve still got to play for, and the good times we can have when we do win.
“It’s funny this team – if we only had 16 players left next week, they’d come out fighting. It wouldn’t be a case of ‘this is going to be too hard, we’re not going to win’ – they don’t sort of have that in their vocabulary.
“It would be ‘yeah we’ve only got 16, let’s go out and have a crack’. That makes my job easy.”
The Bulldogs will host Sydney for the first time this Saturday afternoon from 1.05pm AEDT, in the second week of AFLW Indigenous Round.
