Winning contested ball was one of the themes in season 2012 at the Western Bulldogs and now that focus is paying dividends, Senior Coach Brendan McCartney is progressing to the next stage of his vision.

While the Bulldogs are proving they have the capacity to win the contested ball and the clearances, it’s the spread from the contest and taking advantage of their hard work in close that is at the forefront of McCartney’s mind.

“It’s reality that we are very good at the moment when the ball stops, being able to be productive to get it back a bit earlier and use it a little bit better is the next challenge for us,” McCartney told SEN radio.

“A fair bit of it is around the youth of our people around the ball, who at times probably make decisions just that half a second or a second slower than experienced people.

“Experience will help with that and educating them will help with that.”

The Bulldogs have only lost the contested possession and clearance count once, against Richmond in round three, while Will Minson has only come off second best in the ruck hitouts against three ruckman at the West Coast Eagles.

Now that the young Bulldogs’ side is increasingly capable of winning the ball when it is in dispute, McCartney said the focus will shift to setting up around the stoppages and moving the ball to their advantage on the spread.

“There is an onus on a player though, you do have the leave a contest quickly in the game now, the ball just leaves extraordinarily quick and you can’t get left behind with us,” he said.

“So that’s the next step for us, there’s no doubt about that.”

McCartney has seen some improvements already this season and is hoping to see further games this weekend with experienced Bulldogs’ Ryan Griffen, Robert Murphy and Daniel Giansiracusa added to the side.

“I think there’s some fluctuations… some weeks we do it in patches, other weeks we don’t. Last week we weren’t great moving the ball away from contests… which sort of played into West Coast’s hands a little bit,” he said.

“There were periods the week before against the Cats where we moved it really well.”

The balance of players getting involved at the contest and those positioning themselves on the outside was another area for improvement, McCartney said, which can also be the product of fielding a young side.

“It’s funny with young people sometimes, it’s a natural instinct to hunt in after the ball but sometimes it’s not the right thing to do,” he said.

“Sometimes if you’ve got a couple of your teammates already in there, you probably don’t need to be in there as well.

“So that is the learning for them and the development that we are going to have to put into them.”