Ladder leader\u2019s shock injury blow sours win; Dons\u2019 silver linings emerge \u2014 3-2-1<\/a><\/p>\nBeveridge admitted it was \u201can ugly game to watch\u201d with both teams committing their fair share of skill errors throughout.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter quarter-time, the game fell away for us, and so you give Essendon credit for their pressure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut just the blatant turnover stuff, and the in-close side of things – we just didn\u2019t seem like ourselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt we should\u2019ve played better.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a difficult one to talk to your players about post, because we\u2019re all really grateful for what they put in and winning the game, but I think they seem pretty flat that they probably hadn\u2019t been at their absolute best.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs headed into the game without star midfielder Ed Richards, who was a very late out after experiencing knee soreness in the warm-up, but Beveridge was confident it was a minor issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to take any risks and took him out,\u201d Beveridge said.<\/p>\n
During the match, the Dogs also lost Tim English (knee) and Arthur Jones (hamstring) who looked on the verge of a breakout game with 10 touches, four grabs and a career-high three goals from just 55 per cent game time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was impressive and it just seems like every time he just gets going, he gets injured unfortunately,\u201d Beveridge said of the 20-gamer, who has only managed seven matches since 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe hasn\u2019t been able to have any momentum in his AFL journey over recent times when he\u2019s really developed into a player who can have an impact on the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019ve got to do some work with him to get his durability up a little bit, but it\u2019d be a real shame if he\u2019s out of the game again for any period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prolific midfielder Ed Richards (knee soreness) was a late exclusion before the match. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Western Bulldogs might be sitting on top of the ladder as the last remaining undefeated team, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,67818,64,63,55,639,287385,120796,35347,12099,11288,287386,39242,287389,287381,663,287388,287387,668,287384,1819,287382,287383,85,698],"class_list":{"0":"post-587919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-arthur-jones","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-australian-football-league","13":"tag-australianfootballleague","14":"tag-blatant-turnover-stuff","15":"tag-breakout-game","16":"tag-conference-video","17":"tag-game-time","18":"tag-grand-final","19":"tag-in-close-side","20":"tag-knee-soreness","21":"tag-ladder-leader","22":"tag-lick-wounds","23":"tag-luke-beveridge","24":"tag-luke-beveridge-round-4-press","25":"tag-open-field-targets","26":"tag-press-conference","27":"tag-real-shame","28":"tag-ronny-lerner","29":"tag-shock-injury-blow","30":"tag-skill-errors","31":"tag-sports","32":"tag-western-bulldogs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587919","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=587919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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