The Western Bulldogs’ long and arduous Queensland ‘adventure’ is over, but the future remains bright for the Club, according to coach Luke Beveridge.
The Bulldogs fell agonisingly short of advancing to the second week of the finals, falling by three points to St Kilda at the Gabba on Saturday.
While clearly shattered to have been knocked out in an Elimination Final for the second successive year, Beveridge believes the squad has shown growth over the last 12 months.
“It’s been a really tough campaign. I couldn’t be any prouder, I couldn’t commend our players any more for the way they’ve persevered throughout the course of the year,” he said.
“We know improvement and development isn’t linear.
“Off the back of last year, we would’ve liked to have had a much better start. We know it was muddled. We know we were disappointing early.
“But there’s been significant growth in our year. I’m encouraged by it. We’re enthusiastic about our future with our growth.
“Ultimately you want to win tonight. We’d like to be in the top four. We’re not.
“We’d like to win an elimination final and give ourselves another look, and continue on. It ends in disappointment, even though there are some positive aspects of the year.”
The Bulldogs will leave their Gold Coast hub over the coming days, ending a three-month stint away from home.
Once the dust settles, they will turn their attention to how they can improve their list during the off-season.
“We’ve got to keep bolstering out list with the attributes that are important in the way the game is played,” Beveridge said.
“Some of the areas that we probably got touched up a bit in tonight were probably because we probably didn’t have the role players to really see it through at different times throughout the course of the night.
“Our boys will learn a lesson or two, but we’ll still be looking at what the possibilities are, whether there’s an acquisition here and there on trade that will help us, give us some depth, put some pressure on for spots and performance. We won’t be idle.”
