Senior Coach Brendan McCartney is confident the Western Bulldogs have the necessary depth to cover the loss of recent injuries ahead of tomorrow night’s clash with Geelong.

“We’ve got replacements – and probably the best part about it… is that some of those young fellas have been terrific at VFL level,” McCartney said.

“So they come in with good form and the challenge for them is to back that up against more credentialed, experienced opponents.

“We may have to look just at subtly doing things a little bit different.”

After showing strong form in the VFL, Patrick Veszpremi has been given the call up to play his first senior game this season, providing a mid-sized option in the forward line.

While his 37 possession and three goal haul impressed McCartney, it was his ability to return to team structures that earned him the spot.

“He’s had some inconsistencies already this year but what he had in the bank was he got himself fitter than he has ever been,” he said.

“He’s got talent the challenge now is to be able to replicate it at the next level up and we are confident that he will help us tomorrow night.”

Going head to head with an undefeated Geelong outfit can be an imposing task for a largely inexperienced Bulldogs line up, but McCartney is still encouraging his players to take the game on.

“We are encouraging them every week and we do drills every week to encourage people to have the confidence to shift the ball into some space and move a bit quicker,” he said.

“Sometimes young people [are] under high pressure and fatigue and when the game is going really fast and they forget that.

“At the moment as with times last year, we’ve got a lot of those [inexperienced] players in at the same time.”

The Bulldogs have named 16 players with less than 50 games experience on Saturday night – while seven have less than 15 games under their belt.

McCartney said despite the level of inexperience on his team, Saturday’s game posed as a great opportunity to measure up against a more seasoned team in Geelong.

“There will be contests where you think ‘gee, they have actually done better than they probably should with the opponent they are against’ and probably the ones who when the game gets hot, they are ok with that, they respond to it,” he said

“There’s no doubt tomorrow night some of our younger players will have patches in the game where it is getting away on them – how well they get themselves back into the game, and that is almost the definition of maturity in an AFL player.

“Anyone in their job, when you have a bad minute you don’t let it become a bad day and a bad week - you can correct it.

“There will be opportunities for a lot of our youngsters tomorrow night to play against people that have been doing it very well for a long time and measure themselves against it.”