WESTERN Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade says recovery will be paramount for his players this week as they work towards their preliminary final appointment with St Kilda.

The Dogs, who went into their semi-final clash against the Sydney Swans with a handful of players less than 100 per cent fit, left the MCG on Saturday night with even more bruises after the physical five-point win.

While Eade said they had suffered no new injuries, the players would have a very light week ahead of next Saturday night’s rematch of the 2009 prelim.  

“[Recovery] will be massive. We won’t be training,” he said.

“We didn’t train a lot this week either. We had two or three sessions of 30, 40 minutes and that’s all we did.

“I think it will be the same next week.”

Eade said the win over the Swans, which came after the Dogs fell 30 points adrift in the second quarter, showed enormous character and resilience.

“The last three or four weeks have been disappointing and we’ve been challenged publicly about our effort, which is fair enough,” he said.

“I think tonight we showed a lot of spirit and courage. It shows really what the group’s about and the club’s about.”

He said goals to Barry Hall and debutant Andrew Hooper deep in the second quarter gave the Dogs the impetus they needed in the second half.

“Up to that stage, we had 26 inside 50s - a huge number - but we didn’t look like scoring,” he said.

“Barry [Hall] just missed [Robert] Murphy and then Barry went for a mark and had his arms taken out and we turned a couple over and missed targets.

“We didn’t look like we were going to challenge the scoreboard.

“Those two goals enabled us to keep close enough. We’d spoken about during the week and at half time that Sydney’s record on bigger grounds in the second half hadn’t been great.

“That was more a psychological ploy to give our guys confidence to overrun them, and we started the third quarter off pretty well.”

Eade said defender Dale Morris would see a specialist this week to determine if he could return from a back fracture that was initially thought to have ended his season after round 21.

Tom Williams, Brian Lake and Jarrad Grant, who all looked sore after copping hits last weekend, are expected to face the Saints, while Jordan Roughead will come into the mix after playing in the VFL on Saturday.