Rodney Eade concedes the football world has all but written off his Western Bulldogs, but he doesn't regard his team's underdog status as a potential positive ahead their qualifying final at the MCG against minor premiers Collingwood.
With injury queries over several stars and coming of heavy losses to finals rivals Geelong and Sydney in the past three weeks, the Bulldogs are $4.00 rank outsiders for Saturday night's match.
Eade is perfectly entitled to argue that the world is against the Dogs, but it's a card he's reluctant to play.
"Whether you're favourites or underdogs doesn't really worry us," said Eade.
"I can play up the underdog tag and do all that sort of caper because people have written us off, but what people say about us whether it's a positive or a negative certainly shouldn't affect the way we play."
"We shouldn't need the 'us against them' mentality that everyone has written us off.'
"We've got our own process, our own motivation that way we want to go about it."
Eade said he believes his team's form is better than it reads on paper.
"If you take a form line over seven, eight or nine weeks, I think we've been pretty good," he said.
"It was just those two weeks (against Cats and Swans) when we've had the top-four (spot) sewn up and we had the flu and we had some injuries that it coincided all together."
"We started to get a bit of momentum back last week (against Essendon), there was a bit of confidence within the group so, I think in totality, we can take some confidence from what's happened in the last nine or 10 weeks."
Eade confirmed that back-up ruckman Jordan Roughead would miss this week with a shoulder injury but Shaun Higgins is "almost certain" to return from a calf strain while Brian Lake who appeared inconvenienced by a hip complaint during last Saturday's win over the Bombers had pulled up OK and "should be fine".
Skipper Brad Johnson (Achilles tendon strain) and Ryan Griffen, who suffered bone bruising to his left knee against Essendon, are rated 50-50.
"He's got a little bit of swelling and a little bit of soreness so I don't think he'll be training early in the week," said Eade of Griffen.
"There's no operation (required) and no ligament damage."
"As to whether he gets up we'll have to wait and see."
"I think it's that case that we won't (play anyone who's not 100 percent fit)."
"I think in a big final every team's done that at some stage and ... generally it doesn't work so I think we need players that are 100 percent that can play a full game."
Eade said the Bulldogs were unlikely to try anything different or radical in September and would play to their strengths.
"I think it's difficult to change midstream as far as change everything," he said.
"Our game is based around quick movement of the ball and we need to get the ball into Barry (Hall) quickly and I think we can score."
"Defensively we've been very good all year until the last two and-a-half games so we need to refocus and get back to what we were for the previous nine weeks."
"Finals footy is going to bring that out, the intensity's going to go up, the pace is going to go up and the pressure's going to go up."
Asked whether the addition of Hall will make a difference, Eade said: "It's not going to hurt, but it's not going to be judged on the number of goals Barry kicks."
"He's got to be able to contest and bring the ball to ground if he doesn't mark it."
"I think the pleasing thing about Barry this year is that he's very team-orientated and as we saw earlier in the year - he's dropped off a little bit - is his ability to put pressure on the opposition."
"I think all our forwards need to do that on the weekend."