THE FINAL two minutes at Etihad Stadium was a debacle for the Western Bulldogs on Saturday night, as they coughed up the lead to North Melbourne and ended up losing by two points.

But the players won’t need to wait until the usual Monday review meeting to work out what went wrong after Billy Gowers goalled to put them ahead.

Coach Luke Beveridge already took care of that, walking his shell-shocked players through all that went wrong in those final stages in a blistering address that could be heard by anyone within earshot of the Dogs’ rooms, whether they were part of the team meeting or not.

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“We should have won the game. But coulda, woulda, shoulda…it’s a disappointing outcome,” he said.

The Kangaroos traveled the length of the ground in 46 seconds to kick the winning goal after Mitch Wallis had put the ball out on the full deep in the forward line, trying to finesse a pass to Gowers in the pocket instead of kicking straight to the top of the goal square.

Beveridge said the Bulldogs set-ups failed miserably in those dying minutes, which he put down partly to inexperience. But he also put it on his experienced players, saying there were 12 mistakes made.

“We should have been able to contain it,” he said, citing a failure by his forwards to compress, which left acres of space for the Kangaroos to attack down the ground. Even more galling was that the structural breakdown came with just seconds remaining on the clock, which the players knew.

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“The urgency under fatigue was disappointing. Obviously, we’ve reviewed that and hopefully the boys will be stewing over it a little bit and making a promise to each other that it won’t happen again if we’re in that situation.

“We walk away from that, and we’ve used the word deflated before, but that’s sucked the air out of us, no doubt.”

Beveridge would not be drawn on whether Saturday night’s defeat was more disappointing than some of the blow-outs the Bulldogs have been on the receiving end of this year.

“Every week we turn up to win and we turned up tonight expecting to win. We got close, but near enough isn’t good enough,” he said.

It is rare that Beveridge peels the paint off the wall post-game. His new-age approach was one of the chief reasons why the Bulldogs came from the clouds to win the premiership less than two years ago. “I’m a rational person. There’s a lot about the game tonight we liked, especially how we moved the footy and created opportunities."

WATCH Luke Beveridge's full post-match media conference

And in stages, the Dogs did look good. Beveridge threw the team around, with Aaron Naughton and Zaine Cordy in the forward line and Pat Lipinski and Ed Richards on the wings. For much of the second term and patches of the last quarter, they set the Kangaroos back on their heels.

“But I don't want our boys to walk away from tonight thinking, ‘That was good and we almost got there.’ We should have got there and we walk away after that little discussion probably with an understanding that next time we're in that situation, in the memory banks and the reminder that we didn't do well is there, and we’ll get it right,” he said.

“You can’t tip-toe around that and go lightly when it’s such a significant stage of the game. As you walk in you have to consider what was good and what’s going to help us the following week and that’s how we had to process it tonight.”