Senior Coach Brendan McCartney has attributed his side’s second consecutive loss to their inability to stick with North Melbourne for four full quarters.
“They hung in there for longer than us and stuck at it,” McCartney said.
“They’ve been through a lot of games like this themselves in the last 18-24 months that we’ve all watched and that they’ve talked about incessantly, and they hung in there a bit better than us.”
Coming off a gruelling round-one clash against West Coast in blistering heat, McCartney was quick to dismiss fatigue played into his side’s performance.
“I haven’t made too many excuses in the last couple of years so I’m not about to now but it was a challenge, but it wasn’t the main reason.”
A relatively low scoring affair the first half saw only 4 majors kicked in what appeared to be a battle of the defences. The two sides then traded goals in the third quarter before North Melbourne were able to kick away late in the final term to overshadow what had been an even contest for most of the match.
“29 points probably doesn’t reflect the level of effort though, actually it doesn’t reflect the level of effort but we’ve got to get better and we will.”
“It would have been real interesting if the game had stayed level for another 12-15 minutes tonight. What would have happened? And that’s our challenge they were better at it than us.”
Echoing his coach’s sentiments Luke Dahlhaus, who provided a spark up forward with 25 touches and one goal, felt his side fell at the last hurdle.
‘It was a tough game, plenty of contests, plenty of stoppages but as a team we know we’re very good at that and I think we handled it really well for three quarters and it just got to the last quarter and unfortunately we just got outworked in the end,” Dahlhaus said.
In control for patches of the match, the Bulldogs failed to take their chances and convert opportunities with McCartney identifying delivery as something his side will need to work on.
“We need to do things a bit more quicker and with a bit more confidence and a bit more surety and not be sort of worried about making an error.”
