Bulldogs to take a chance on Stefan Martin, with ruckman ‘by no means’ in peak condition

Ruckman Stefan Martin hasn’t played since round 12 and was described as an “emergency break glass” option only two weeks ago, but he’s a risk the Western Bulldogs are willing to take to overcome Port Adelaide in Saturday night’s AFL preliminary final.

“By no means will he be at the peak of his performance powers, so our expectations are to really stabilise that stoppage area and help our group to play them on our terms, which we haven’t been able to against Port Adelaide in particular,” coach Luke Beveridge said.

“He will need to manage his game time based on how he’s progressing. He’ll do his bit for the team-on-team defence and whether he gets caught up in any possession chains it’ll just be circumstantial.”

Martin formed a formidable ruck combination with Tim English early in the season, but has been plagued by shoulder, groin and Achilles injuries since.

“I just didn’t think he was going to be able to get though the work to come back,” Beveridge said.

“When I was talking about emergency break glass I was talking about, can we get him to stoppages only and just minimise his game time and hopefully get him through the game?

“In the last couple of weeks he’s been able to put back-to-back sessions in, he trained again yesterday and trained strongly, and what you want from your players is just that desire to play in big occasions, and he’s expressed that.”

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After holding his own in previous weeks, Lewis Young struggled against Brisbane ruckman Oscar McInerney last weekend, prompting the Dogs to return to the Martin-English ruck combination.

The Bulldogs coach also played down any concern about captain Marcus Bontempelli, who hurt his knee late in the victory over Brisbane.

“He’s OK, there’s no risk, he might have a little bit of an ache or a dull pain in there going into the game, but he’ll be fine, he moved extremely well yesterday so there’s no real risk,” he said.

When questioned if Port Adelaide may target the injury, Beveridge warned against it.

“Marcus comes from really strong Irish-Italian heritage. It’s a pretty formidable combination of Mum and Dad, so if anything happens like that there could be some retribution,” he said.

After Saturday night’s win in Brisbane the Bulldogs spent the week in Perth and will fly to Adelaide on Friday afternoon.