WESTERN Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade was proud of his team's effort despite a nail-biting seven-point loss to Fremantle on Monday night at Patersons Stadium.

The Dogs came into the round five clash following a 16-day break since their previous outing against the Brisbane Lions, and managed to overcome a slow start to surge to a 14-point lead in the second quarter.

The visitors then looked down and out when Fremantle took a 20-point advantage midway through the fourth quarter, but the Bulldogs hung tough and took the lead in the frantic final minutes only to be denied by a Nick Lower goal inside the last 60 seconds.

It was a see-sawing, tight and tense battle all night, with both sides struggling with the heavy dew and a slippery ball. While never happy to lose, Eade couldn’t fault the effort of his players even though several mistakes ultimately proved costly.

"There were a lot of positives out of it, there's no doubt, and I was proud of their commitment and courage. As a coach that's all you can ask," Eade said.

"There were some mistakes, but our structures were good and they adhered to most of those. We just made some silly mistakes at the wrong time and didn’t convert when we should have."

Matthew Boyd was inspirational with 45 possessions, and the Dogs’ skipper also restricted the influence of Fremantle counterpart Matthew Pavlich. Eade couldn’t speak more highly of Boyd’s effort.

"There were other players as well, but he obviously led from the front,” Eade said of his captain.

“When Pavlich was getting on top early he went onto him and I thought he was able to quell his dominance to a degree and win the footy himself.

"We were hard at it, our tackling was really good and our commitment to the contest was terrific. All those indicators were very good for us and we probably won most of those, or were high up in our targets, but unfortunately couldn’t quite ice the game."

Eade was forced into an unplanned substitute, with debutant Mitch Wallis coming on at three-quarter time for key defender Tom Williams, who was suffering with back spasms.

The Dogs will return to Melbourne to take on the undefeated Collingwood outfit next Sunday, and Eade says some of his players, including Williams and Barry Hall, are battling sore bodies.

"He (Williams) went into back spasm at half-time, and we were planning to sub another player and put Mitch on earlier but with Tommy we couldn’t. We rotated him three or four times in the third quarter, and left him on the bench a bit longer each time but we had to make the call," Eade said.

"He was struggling to run. We just have to recover well, and they've (Collingwood) got a six-day break as well so there's no excuses there. We'll probably have three or four changes because a few players are a bit sore, but we'll just wait and see."