THE WESTERN Bulldogs have made two surprise late inclusions for Sunday's clash with Hawthorn at Etihad Stadium with Brian Lake and Lindsay Gilbee recalled to the side to replace Ryan Hargrave and Brodie Moles. 

Hargrave will miss the clash with the Hawks owing to foot soreness while Moles is out with illness. 

The Bulldogs have notified the AFL of the late change, which they confirmed after the final team sheets were submitted on Friday night.

Lake comes back into the side for his first senior game since round six. The All Australian full-back has played two games in the VFL since he was dropped before the Dogs' trip to Canberra in round seven.

Gilbee was omitted on Thursday because of what coach Rodney Eade described as a lack of "consistency with effort".

Eade said on Saturday he didn't think Gilbee's reprieve would take away from the message he was initially delivered at the selection table. 

"We're trying to play psychologist there, aren't we?" he said.

"Lindsay didn't know he was back in until late [Friday] afternoon so he's had the public thought that he's been dropped and he had a Williamstown meeting on Thursday night.

"He's had that cattle prod and now it's up to him to grab his opportunity."

Eade said Lake had regained confidence in his body that had been sapped from his lingering recovery from an off-season knee problem.

"I said to Brian  when we put him back, it was never going to be a form issue; it was going to more about him proving to us that he was confident enough, that he trained well enough," he said.

"Last week we wanted to take him to Perth but he didn't get a lot of confidence on the training track.

"This week he's trained pretty well on the Thursday, then we had a bit of session [on Friday] and Brian knocked on the door and said, 'I'm right, I'm confident enough'.

"We'd already selected the side at that stage, so I think from that point of view, it was a real positive."

He said Lake was unlikely to start on in-form forward Lance Franklin, owing to their contrasting pre-season preparation but was likely to be part of a rotation designed to curb the athletic goal-kicker.

Ruckman Ben Hudson, Lukas Markovic, Brennan Stack and Jarrad Grant were the other Bulldogs cut from last week's side that was involved in the Bulldogs' fourth-biggest loss - a 123-point defeat by West Coast at Patersons Stadium.

Eade said Hudson and Gilbee, in particular, needed to rediscover their passion from week to week, and not just "float along".

"With experienced older players, when they get into the circuit of great effort, poor effort, great effort and it's up and down too much … Lindsay was actually close to missing the Richmond game and then played really well," he said.

"Then it was a really poor one on the weekend, so there needed to be a circuit breaker, and it was the same with Ben.

"They're just at that age where they've got to find the hunger and the motivation to perform every week."

Eade also said former Bulldog Jason Akermanis' latest spray that saw him criticise a number of current players on a video published by the Herald Sun on Friday was "irrelevant" and had been considered "amusing" by the club.

He said Akermanis' claim Bronwlow medallist Adam Cooney was currently nursing a cracked kneecap was completely incorrect.

"Adam cracked a kneecap in 2008; it was a bit more than a crack, he chipped the bone off the side," he said.

"He had the operation to take that bone out so there's no crack there. What his problem is is still the patella; it's still kneecap but the cartilage gets flaked because there's no rounded edge in that end of the kneecap to protect his cartilage.

"Unfortunately there were a lot of mis-facts [in the video], as we'd imagine, when there's a tainted view and a blurred vision."