Western Bulldogs’ preparation for the 2012 AFL season will kick up a notch in their next pre-season match, with stars Adam Cooney, Brian Lake and Shaun Higgins slated to return.
The Bulldogs started their pre-season campaign in Blacktown on the weekend with a five-point win over Greater Western Sydney and a seven-point loss to Collingwood in what new coach Brendan McCartney termed a good slog.
A handful of youngsters impressed – Zephaniah Skinner booting two goals in the GWS match and the Dogs’ first pick in last year’s draft Clay Smith showing strong attack on the ball.
While the likes of Skinner and Smith have provided the club’s long-suffering fans with hope in February, it’s Cooney, Lake and Higgins that will play a telling hand in how the team fares this year.
Cooney, the 2008 Brownlow Medallist, was restricted to just 13 games in 2011 while he battled a chronic knee injury, and Lake played just five matches and struggled to recapture form and fitness after pre-season hip, shoulder and knee surgery.
However, the pair looked sharp during last week’s intra-club hit-out and coach Brendan McCartney expects they’ll play in the club’s next pre-season clash, against Carlton on March 4.
“They (Lake, Cooney and Higgins) will all come back and we’ll look at maybe 34 or 35 of our players through the pre-season, which is what it’s about and what it’s for,” he said.
“They’ll get two more weeks of good training into them, they’re itching to get out there. They wanted to play tonight but we felt they weren’t quite at that advanced stage.
“They played last weekend in the trial game, but we could control the speed of that game. Whereas when there’s an opposition it’s not as easy to control, so they’ll come back in the next game.”
Experienced Bulldogs defender Ryan Hargrave, restricted to just five games in 2011 due to a foot injury, played in both of Saturday’s pre-season matches.
McCartney was happy with his side’s doggedness in the scrappy encounters.
“At times it was quite messy, both games. It was quite slippery out there and this time of the year, no matter what you do, fatigue can take over quite quickly.
“So that accounted for some of the mistakes both teams made.
“But I just liked as a group, (when) we weren’t playing our best football we kept in the game.
“If we can’t play our best – don’t play our worst and find a way to stay in the game. From that point of view it was OK.”
