Senior Coach Brendan McCartney has ruled out the return of Western Bulldogs’ veterans Ryan Griffen and Daniel Giansiracusa against West Coast on Sunday at Patersons Stadium.
Both Griffen and Giansiracusa will be given an extra week’s respite, Coach McCartney said, with the view to resume playing duties against North Melbourne in round seven.
“They won’t play. We said Gia would needed two weeks to overcome the injury that he reinjured against Adelaide… and Griff [is] not right [yet],” McCartney said.
“They will definitely both play next week.”
Despite the loss of over 750 games from the round one lineup through injury, the Bulldogs got within striking range in the last quarter against a much more Geelong outfit last Saturday night, before being defeated by 21 points.
McCartney has put his faith behind the largely inexperienced lineup that stretched the Cats, as the focus turns to the round six clash against the West Coast Eagles.
“We lived through it last Saturday night with an exceptionally young,… inexperienced team - we were competitive for a fair bit of the game, so that is the aim again,” he said.
“We are going over optimistic, we are going to plan the same way we do and take some young blokes over there that can run and use the space and see what we can achieve.”
The Bulldogs are confident their best can be competitive against any team, however finding consistency across the young group will become the new test.
“It’s a one week thing though, you’ve got to be able to do it every week,” McCartney said.
“There is no point competing hard one week and then not replicating it the next week.
“It’s a consistency thing, so that is the challenge for us.”
The maturity of captain Matthew Boyd, Nick Lower and Adam Cooney through the midfield has provided some harder bodies to counteract the opposition’s experience.
However, McCartney is even more pleased with the willingness of the young brigade to fast track their development by accepting more responsibility and taking ownership at each contest.
“We’ve also got some really good young players that are getting so much better around the ball and doing a lot of the grunt work as well,” he said.
“[It] is setting them up for good careers too, because they are having to scrap so hard for a kick now.
“When we mature and we get better, they are going to have a real hard edge to them.”
