The Western Bulldogs went frustratingly close to knocking over Collingwood at the MCG on Friday night.
For the second week in-a-row, the Dogs held sway for large parts of the game and looked the winner in the last quarter, only to fall just short.
Last night, it was the final 10 minutes where a lift in performance from the Magpies’ experienced midfield brigade saw them stretch away to record a 14-point win.
“We executed a pretty good plan, and they got a spike out of four of five experienced players in the last quarter. They came hard over the top of us and we couldn’t hold it together,” Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge said after the match.
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“That’s a shame. Obviously, we were right in it. It would’ve been nice to win it. It’s extremely disappointing.
“With weight of numbers and a good third quarter, we got our noses in front. But Grundy started hitting it to the outside, I thought De Goey was influential, I thought Sidebottom and Pendlebury hit their straps in the last quarter.
“They manufactured something that we had been able to contain.
“Our midfield had done a tremendous job for the most part, but we couldn’t quite find that pulse that we needed to at the end of the game.”
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Despite the loss, Beveridge was pleased with the continued growth of the Club’s younger players, including Tim English, Aaron Naughton and Bailey Smith.
“There’s some promise there. There’s some enthusiasm around how we’re evolving, but we’re always in a hurry,” he said.
“My mandate is to try and produce the best sides that we can as quickly as possible to win games to take us up the ladder quickly.
“We feel like we can still do that this year, but in the last two weeks we’ve dropped games that were well within our grasp.”
