WESTERN Bulldogs coach Brendan McCartney has vowed to maintain a positive approach with his players despite suffering a 49-point loss to West Coast at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.
However, the debutant coach said his coaching panel would continue to give their players honest feedback.
"We'll be optimistic with this group, (but it) won’t be airy-fairy, fluffy-duffy stuff," he said.
"We'll identify some fundamentals to team defence that will help us going forward."
The Bulldogs had no answer to Eagles star forward Josh Kennedy, who bagged seven goals and was the beneficiary of some slick stoppage work.
Asked about how he had planned to stop the Eagles' tall forwards and changing rucks, McCartney said he had wanted to deny opportunities to the Eagles' tall forwards and changing rucks.
"There's no tougher ball to defend than a quick clearance out of a centre bounce where the ball's spinning nicely. There were way too many of those."
The biggest positive for the Bulldogs was the performance of 18-year-old debutant Clay Smith, who bagged four goals before being subbed off with cramp.
"To see young people come into the game and just see the ball and go for it, and put his body on the line and just compete so hard … " McCartney said.
"You don’t anticipate that a young guy is going to come in and kick four goals. Just his contests in other areas of the ground were terrific.
"I would have preferred he didn’t go into a full-body cramp … but that probably indicative (and) reflective of how hard he worked and how much he committed to the game."
Another Bulldog who battled hard was skipper Matthew Boyd, who amassed a game-high 38 disposals, but uncharacteristically turned the ball over on occasions.
"I thought he may have run himself into the ground a little bit," McCartney said. "I think his effort to cover ground and get to contests to help his teammates was outstanding.
"I'm reluctant to be too critical of that. I don’t want to put a label on a player, too, after one game.
"He's a professional, he's a fantastic person and been a great player for a long time. He'll go home tonight and dissect where he can get better and that might bob up in his own mind."
At the last change, McCartney took aside key forward Liam Jones, who kicked three behinds in the third term.
"He gets angry with himself," McCartney said.
"He's not immune to the perception that he's the next great white hope that's been painted on him, which I don’t sort of agree with.
"He puts more pressure on himself than we put on him as a group of coaches or the leadership group. I was more talking to him about that.
"He told me after the game he learnt three or four things today that he can keep for the rest of this career. We mightn't be having the same conversation if he'd slotted four."
As for a self-assessment, McCartney said, "I'll go home tonight (and) there's probably one or two things on reflection we may have been able to do a bit earlier," he said.
One was moving Lukas Markovic off Kennedy. But McCartney backed his defender.
"I like the way Lukas Markovic goes about his football.
"Yeah, he got beaten a couple of times, and there were a few times (where) it wouldn’t have mattered who we had on (Kennedy). But there's also some times where his efforts were pretty good.
"I can remember some young defenders a long time ago that I worked closely with that got beaten early in their careers and became better players off the back of it, and I think he'll be one of those."
Christian Howard is expected to miss four weeks with a suspected medial ligament injury on his left leg.
