Western Bulldogs forward Aaron Naughton will have scans on Friday for a suspected strained neck after an unsettling landing on Thursday night.

Naughton crashed hard to the ground after flying for a mark during the Bulldogs’ 66-point loss to Sydney at Marvel Stadium.

The Bulldogs spearhead was stretchered from the ground during the third quarter but coach Luke Beveridge said he was free to go home after the match.

“He’s going to go home now and he’ll have his neck looked at tomorrow, we’ll get back to you on that,” Beveridge said.

“He appears to have strained down that side of his neck from the incident or occurrence.

“The bright side is there’s no sign of concussion but we’ll have to report in once we get something more definitive from a scan.”

The Naughton setback comes after Sam Darcy succumbed to an ACL injury in the heavy loss to Geelong last week.

Beveridge said the Bulldogs had been challenged in personnel, but were also overwhelmed in pressure and execution.

“It’s been an interesting couple of weeks of that, hasn’t it?” Beveridge said.

“I think there’s a disparity in many things in the game tonight. We started off the game in good fashion and the things we spoke about beforehand came to the fore.

“As the night went on, we probably needed our more experienced players really influencing the game, obviously Marcus (Bontempelli) was (but) we didn’t have enough elsewhere.

“The younger guys came up to speed a little bit but (Sydney) were just more vibrant: their speed, their work across the ground.

“They pressured us into aspects of the game you don’t want to be accustomed to, it turned really, really ugly for us.

“Fifteen back-half turnovers in that last quarter we gave up, that’s just a world record and that’s skill, that’s composure, it’s fatigue, it’s many things.

“We have to work through that together and remain optimistic.”

Beveridge said the back half turnovers in part allowed Charlie Curnow (seven goals) as many opportunities as he did.

“Curnow was quite exceptional one-on-one, none of our backs could stop him from marking those contested marks which is disappointing,” he said.

“We think we should be better than that but he had obviously a very influential game.”

The Bulldogs have little time to waste correcting their three-match losing streak as they host the red-hot Fremantle next week.

Originally published as AFL 2026: Western Bulldog star Aaron Naughton will get a neck scan on Friday after his big fall