Western Bulldogs senior coach Luke Beveridge says his side has a few areas to improve after being overrun by Richmond in the second half on Friday night.

The Bulldogs had the upper hand on the scoreboard after the first half of the “arm wrestle” – leading by 19 points at the major break.

But the Tigers dominated the third quarter and turned that deficit into a 22-point advantage by the final siren.

“They probably found another gear that we couldn’t quite find,” Beveridge said post-game, after his side’s first loss for 2021.

“But I still think we were able to steady ourselves and it became a little bit of an arm wrestle there again for a period of time.

“We had a couple of looks that we didn’t capitalise on that would have put us maybe close to in front in the last quarter.

“There was life there, but it was snuffed out really quickly which was a shame.

“For a half we had the reigning premiers in a pretty good arm wrestle, but to get out-scored by just over 40 points in the second half – we’re all disappointed. We aim to be better next week.”

Beveridge praised his defence for limiting the Tigers to just 11 goals from their 57 inside-50s.

But he said the Bulldogs’ midfield had been challenged by a deep Richmond on-ball brigade and that across the board the team didn’t have enough strong contributors.

The Bulldogs have made 12 changes over the past three weeks, through a combination of injury and trying to find their best mix.

“We’ve been trying to set ourselves a pretty high standard and living up to it each week is our challenge,” Beveridge said.

“We know if we do, we’ll be there right to the death with most teams.

“You can go and give Richmond credit for in the end just overpowering us and there’s a weight of numbers thing, I think they just had too many individuals who were more productive than our group.

“We had too many down to be there at the end.

“You can’t have too many out of sorts against a team like Richmond.”