Western Bulldogs coach Nathan Burke says it’s important to identify the small wins among games, even when on-field results aren’t going in their favour.
The Bulldogs endured their biggest defeat of the season so far against Sydney over the weekend, but Burke said positives can still be found.
“I don’t think they’re sick of that message at the moment. The losses are losses – you can’t do anything about it,” Burke told media post-match.
“In terms of changing attack, we threw the magnets around again today. I told the players I was going to do that, and to embrace wherever you end up.
“Issy Grant goes forward and kicks her first goal which is fantastic. We’ve got those little (positives) along the way.
“I don’t want to say the scoreboard is irrelevant, because we want to win and we want to win for our fans, but I think we’re in that position now where the scoreboard in our favour would be fantastic.
“As I said, when the scoreboard is not in your favour, you do have to find other positives and I still can. I think they still can too, so that’s the main thing.”
Burke used debutant Jorja Borg as another positive example, and was particularly impressed with her moments.
“She came to our VFLW program really late, but just grasped everything we threw at her and ended up being a joint best and fairest winner,” he said.
“I was always really keen to give her a run around, mainly just for her sake.
“She knows now that she is absolutely good enough. I thought she was fantastic today.
“That’s another positive. All those little things are what we’ll hang our hat on.”
The Bulldogs will next travel to Perth to take on West Coast, before a home Pride Round match against North Melbourne.
Burke said looking ahead is the only way forward.
“I address it by saying to the players we have two weeks to go – everything that’s happened in the first eight weeks has happened. We can’t change it,” he said.
“What we’ve got now is two chances to get better.
“That means getting better at not falling over when you pick up the ball, getting better at hitting targets, getting better at identifying where the free players are – that’s pretty much the whole message at the end of this.
“I don’t even have to talk about putting the cue in the rack and being selfish – which is a natural thing that can happen to teams at this stage.
“I can see it in their eyes and I can see in their training – they still want to improve and still want to get better so that’s what we’ll do.
“As a collective group we’ll get better. We may not get the benefits of it this year, but it will slingshot us into a big, long preseason. We’ll be able to use examples from now, next year.”
