It may only be February but new Western Bulldogs coach Brendan McCartney is keen for his players to put their best foot forward in the NAB Cup because 'bad habits can sneak in pretty quickly'.
McCartney may have only been in charge at the Whitten Oval for a few short months but he has already drummed into his players the importance of being hard at the ball, as Robert Murphy revealed on Friday.
And when he spoke on Friday morning the rookie coach said the fact that his team will be taking on a weakened Collingwood and newcomers Greater Western Sydney won't mean they'll be taking it easy.
"It's a game of football, it's AFL football, albeit in February," McCartney said ahead of the Bulldogs' trip north for the triple header against the Giants and Magpies at Blacktown.
"Good habits are best learnt from day one and practiced and bad habits can sneak in pretty quickly too."
"So as a coach and part of a coaching panel we want to develop good habits and we want our older players and our more experienced players to develop our younger players and we want our young players to see how the game should be played from day one."
"Does that mean we'll be playing seriously when the ball bounces? I expect our boys to be hard at the ball and do what they're asked to do."
While the likes of Adam Cooney, Shaun Higgins and Brian Lake will be missing from the Bulldogs' squad on Saturday, McCartney added that fans can expect to get their first look at draftees Tory Dickson, Clay Smith and Michael Talia.
"We'll play three boys that we drafted this year ... and we've also got another five or six young players who have had a little bit of experience at the level who I'm sure want to do more and want more involvement in our club and are looking to grab that opportunity," he added.
"So I think you'll see glimpses from Ayce Cordy tomorrow night, you'll see Christian Howard running around."
"You'll see faces that hopefully will look a little bigger and stronger on the back of a good summer and maybe look a little stronger around the ball and look to our supporters like they're players that have maybe taken more steps in their development towards what they'll become."
McCartney admitted there are likely to be nerves for both him and the rest of his coaching panel on Saturday night as 'there's always a degree of anxiousness' in elite sport but he wasn't expecting it to play a major part.