Western Bulldogs leader Kirsty Lamb says the 2021 AFLW season will provide a lot of confidence to the group as they continue to develop and strive for the ultimate success.
Despite beating Richmond by 13 points in the final round of the home-and-away season, the AFLW Bulldogs’ 2021 campaign came to a close on Friday night after finishing eight on the ladder.
Lamb said the younger players in particular will take a lot from the season that was.
“I think we can see the talent – every game they play they get better and better, and they get more confidence in them and their own ability,” Lamb told westernbulldogs.com.au post-match.
“I’m certainly looking forward to retaining our group, and moving forward and winning more games of football.
“I think our girls will take a lot of confidence out of this (game) particularly into next year, but I think for now we’ll just rest and recover and celebrate the season that’s been.”
Lamb said having remained undefeated at VU Whitten Oval this year was another great achievement for the group.
“We started calling it ‘the Fortress’ – when (people) look at their fixture and see they are playing the Bulldogs at Whitten Oval, we want them to sort of scratch their noses up a bit,” she said.
“We absolutely love playing out here, we train out here, and we know how to use the ground to our advantage so hopefully we can get some more games (here) in the future.
“We love playing in front of our fans and our families, so Whitten Oval is home for us.”
While the Bulldogs’ 5-4 win-loss record was a significant improvement on last year’s 1-5 standing, head coach Nathan Burke said there’s still plenty of progress to go if his side wants to match the best teams and make finals.
“We were 1-5 last year, and we recognised that the way that we did things and our standards were reflective of 1-5, so we really made a conscious effort to increase those standards (this year),” Burke told media post-match.
“We did and that got us to 5-4, but no-one’s happy with 5-4. We need to go up even further, we need to go 7-2, 8-1.
“To do that, as I just told the girls, we need to increase our standards even more.”
