Vice-captain Marcus Bontempelli says the Western Bulldogs will look to build on the high-pressure game that served them well in Saturday night’s win against the Sydney Swans.
Bontempelli, among the Dogs’ best in the season-opening win, could feel the energy around the contest.
“It’s often feel-based, particularly in games,” he told RSN Breakfast Club.
“You get a sense for how you’re going based on your feeling – ‘we’re in the contest, we feel like the energy’s up.’”
“What we’ve always valued quite highly is our pressure, and source pressure around the ball, which has always helped us then build the rest of our gam around that key element.
BONTEMPELLI DOMINATES COACHES VOTES
“That was probably the key thing for us late last year too, in that last sort of four weeks where we won three and lost the last one by a couple of points.
“Based on last week, for the majority of the game that (pressure) was pretty good, but we’ve just got to find a way to maintain energy levels later in the game.”
There will always be areas to improve, and Bontempelli acknowledged the test his team faced against the fast-finishing Swans.
In a reversal of last season’s tight loss to the Swans, this time the Bulldogs young group held on to claim the four points.
“There were some good signs for us early, up until the third quarter and then early in that fourth they really came at us,” Bontempelli said.
“We were challenged, but as a young team – although you can look at the room for improvement and say what happened there at the start of that fourth quarter – for us to be able to galvanise and find a bit late in that fourth quarter was a good thing for us going forward.”
