Full match coverage and stats<\/a><\/p>\nMcCluggage failed to complete last week’s pre-season match against Gold Coast after corking the same calf, but coach Chris Fagan said he had trained strongly during the week to prove his fitness.<\/p>\n
“He’ll be scanned tomorrow (Sunday),” Fagan said.<\/p>\n
“He came off with a sore calf. That’s all I know. He trained very well during the week. It’s one of those things.”<\/p>\n
Andrews has a different reason for concern.<\/p>\n
After spoiling the ball in a marking contest on centre wing, the three-time All-Australian swung his arm back and collected Jones high.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t seen it. I haven’t got the benefit of a replay,” Fagan said.<\/p>\n
Despite the doubt over two of its most important players to face the Swans in Sydney next Saturday night, Brisbane should get its first look at off-season recruit Sam Draper, who has recovered from a bone stress injury.<\/p>\n
Fagan said there was “no alarm bells” after his team watched a 26-point lead disappear against the red-hot Dogs.<\/p>\n
“I look at the stats and there’s so much green (positive) for us,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We won territory \u2026 we won contested possession. Clearances we won by five. Our pressure was pretty good. We had 13 more inside 50s.<\/p>\n
“There was a lot of good things about the game \u2026 but it was all about making the most of our chances and they did that better than we did.<\/p>\n
“They’re a good team.”<\/p>\n
Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge was delighted with his team’s composure late in the match following a 2025 marred by narrow losses to quality opposition.<\/p>\n
Last year the Dogs’ only win against a top-eight outfit came against Greater Western Sydney, but this campaign could not have started any better.<\/p>\n
They kicked two goals just prior to the final change to breathe life into the match, then slammed on seven goals in the fourth quarter to snatch victory.<\/p>\n
“It seemed like history was repeating itself,” Beveridge said.<\/p>\n
“As much as we’re really honest with what happened last year, and some of the things we know we needed to be better at we’ve worked hard on, mainly around the contest and defensive disciplines, but it’s important I don’t stay in the past and we live in the now and push ahead.<\/p>\n
“Based on what we achieved last year, it is important for us.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a level of confidence that we weren’t too far away from those better teams last year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brisbane could be without two of its most important players for next week’s clash with Sydney Arthur Jones…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-525338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}