THE WESTERN Bulldogs’ strong response in the last quarter to a Richmond revival in the third term of Friday night’s match at the MCG would give the Dogs’ players a lot of confidence, according to coach Rodney Eade.

“I think the win was really set up in the first half,” Eade said. “Our pressure was really able to open the game up, so hopefully we can maintain that.”Richmond scored a wasteful 3.8 to the Bulldogs 2.3 in the third quarter, but Eade said he was “reasonably confident at three-quarter time we would have enough run in our legs.“It was a good plus that we were able to meet that challenge. We would have got confidence from that.“I think full credit to Richmond. They dug deep in gaining the ascendancy in the third quarter, but I think to the (Bulldogs) guys credit, they were pretty good.”Eade said he rested a few key players at times during the third term, and the team took too literally his wish to slow the tempo of the match. “We started to slow the game down, but we probably did it too slowly and got ourselves into trouble a little bit.“We had a couple of entries into the forward-50 when players were free and we missed targets, and that hurt us. I don’t know if it was fatigue or concentration.”