AFTER everything that happened in their week seven match and the week following it, the Western Bulldogs have made a statement, downing Carlton by 33 points last night.

After a tough week in the media after what happened last week match, Bulldogs coach Tamara Hyett was pleased that her side was able to silence the detractors with their performance against the Blues.

“I think we were able to execute on a lot of things this week, and that was very pleasing. Being able to get some reward for effort on the scoreboard always helps,” Hyett said.

“We reiterated during the week around the areas that we’ve been working on probably for the past month, and we were able to execute tonight. At one stage, I didn’t see the final numbers, but the tackle inside 50s were 19 to three, that was pretty impressive stuff there. I think the forward half turnovers ended up being, I think, 41 to 11, so that’s always a good indicator for us that we’re on as far as pressure and time in forward half is paramount to the way that we want to play.”

Hyett also confessed that “it’s been pretty brutal, to be honest, the week”, but reminded fans and the side’s detractors of a key thing.

“We have a process that we’re sticking to,” Hyett said.

“Sometimes you execute how you want to, other times you don’t.

“I’m extremely proud of, the messaging didn’t really change. It was just about executing and little things like fundamentals were better.

“I think, you can have an off night sometimes, and what people forget is the starting point where we started, and sometimes scoreboard doesn’t actually show the process that you’ve put in place and the growth.

“That’s how we are measuring it. We had a probably not great starting point based on the number of players that went out, so people forget about the starting point. And look, those ones that probably were reporting on how bad we were, let’s be honest, we won’t sugarcoat, it was pretty brutal. They were also the ones that were reporting on that we weren’t going to have a win for the year.”

Not everything went to plan for the Bulldogs last night, with Alice Edmonds unable to run out the game after copping a foot injury.

When asked about her star ruck, Hyett said that ““we’ll wait for the scans and I guess there’ll be conversations during the week” about how best to replace Edmonds if need be.  

“She’s an amazing player. She’s played a huge role for us this year” Hyett also said.