DETERMINATION to win this year's premiership was the theme of the Western Bulldogs' impressive season launch at Docklands on Wednesday night.

The club decided against having the function at its previous venue – the Lakeside Banquet & Convention Centre in Taylors Lakes – to go upmarket with a Victory Room function for 500 attendees.

Canapés on the boundary, supplied by new major sponsor Mission Foods, kicked off the evening before proceedings moved inside where players were presented to the crowd.

Each player was handed their jumper by club great Scott West, who retired at the end of last season. West said jumper presentation nights were always special.

"To be able to pull on the jumper and know what that jumper has done in history and also know that you have the opportunity to create your own history is a great feeling," he said.

A highlight of West's involvement was the moment he handed his No.7 guernsey to new leadership group member Shaun Higgins, who acknowledged the seven time best-and-fairest winner's contribution to the club.

"They are big shoes but I'm not going to try and fill them," he said.

"I'll just go about footy the way he did and continue to learn as much as I did from the time he was at the club."

Coach Rodney Eade addressed the crowd and dispelled any concerns raised by the Dogs' winless start to the pre-season.

"I think it was a slow news day for the Herald Sun on Monday, having us as the back page lead about our pre-season game," he said.

"I have been really pleased this pre-season. There's obviously some areas we need to work on but out of the three games we've played, we've had up to six or seven players out each time.

"Some of the signs in the second half of the Sydney game last week were encouraging, while the game against St Kilda was just terrible from both sides.

"We've had a very solid pre-season, and probably our work rate over the last week was as heavy as it's been football-wise.

"Because we've got a very tough start to the year travel-wise, we've got a plan to load the players up fitness-wise and they've been playing tired, but we're starting to lighten the load now.

"We've felt in the last two seasons we've fallen away a little bit and we hope we'll take a different tack into the end of the season this year."

President David Smorgon said the club was determined to atone for falling short of last year's grand final and has been working hard to ensure it doesn't happen in 2009.

"Anybody that was in the rooms after our preliminary loss to Geelong last year would have felt and noticed a sheer hunger, a feeling of hurt, that we need to go that next step," he said.

"That hunger has been maintained in everything I've seen and in everything I've heard over this pre-season period.

"The players have put the work in and they deserve success. As a club, we have supported them.

"We will continue to work our butts off. We will continue to work hard. We've got objectives to achieve that we haven't yet reached and we will not stop working.

"We are a club on the move. We are on the improve. We want a premiership."