Impressive Bulldogs benefitting from strong summer

SOUTH Fremantle made an impressive opening to its pre-season campaign with a big win over Claremont last Saturday night and for coach Paul Hasleby it was encouraging to see the hard work over summer and plans for 2014 come to light against genuine competition.

The Bulldogs have not beaten Claremont in a home and away WAFL match in the last nine attempts stretching back to the last victory in Round 15, 2009, so Hasleby knows all too well that the Tigers are a top-class opponent.

And things didn’t start ideally on the scoreboard last Saturday night at Fremantle Oval with Claremont leading 3.2 (20) to 0.5 (5) at quarter-time, but things clicked for the Bulldogs in the second quarter with Ben Saunders on fire with three goals, and Ashton Hams booting a goal on the run from outside-50.

From quarter-time onwards, South Fremantle outscored Claremont by 66 points with 14 goals to three to end up winning by 51, 14.13 (97) to 6.10 (46).

While it is only a pre-season game and nobody at the Bulldogs is getting too carried away with the result, the signs were encouraging with James Sellar, Josh Pullman and Stephen Mills among those to impress in their first proper hit out in South Fremantle jumpers.

It is clearly a faster, stronger and fitter South Fremantle looking outfit than the one of this time 12 or 24 months ago, and Hasleby has every reason to like what he is seeing at this point.

"We have implemented a weights program over the last two years within the club for all our young guys to help with injuries, but also put on some size. You see the modern players are a bit taller and stronger, so hopefully Mike Vega's program is starting to pay off," Hasleby said.

"For the boys the pre-season games are a long time coming so we worked on four or five things that will make up our game plan this year, and we really worked on them hard.

"This was the first time under real pressure that we have had to execute it and we came away from the game pretty satisfied that we are on the right track with regards to the execution of the game plan."

South Fremantle now has one more pre-season match to go this Saturday against Peel Thunder at Mandurah's Bendigo Bank Stadium before the season commences in Round 1 with the Bulldogs taking on Subiaco in a twilight fixture on Saturday March 22 at Leederville's Medibank Stadium.

Hasleby is hoping that the good management of his players lasts past this Saturday's clash so he has a full squad of players to pick from for Round 1, but he is looking for another strong showing from South Fremantle first against Peel.

"Everyone should be ready for Round 1 and unless there's a hiccup, we should have a full squad available to play reserves and league, and that's very exciting," Hasleby said.

"We just have to keep upholding our values that we set this year at training and we can't afford to get complacent. We know we still have a lot of work to do and we are going to keep trying to perfect our game plan on the track and against Peel in our last pre-season game.

"It will be exciting for our players to go up against some of the AFL players who will be running around and see how they measure up."

By Chris Pike