Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade has taken a hard line this week, demanding his players confront their demons in Friday's AFL semi-final.

The Bulldogs had a team meeting on Tuesday night in the wake of Friday's disastrous qualifying-final performance against Hawthorn.

After a superb start to the season, the Bulldogs have lost six of their last eight games and are determined not to go out of the finals in straight sets.

By contrast, the Swans are revitalised after two successive wins.

"We had a bit of a thing last Tuesday night - you can have all the speakers you like, but really it's about your own actions," Eade said.

"People say you've got to be positive, and you do, but positive sometimes is about masking things as well, it's about fluffing it up.

"It's more this week about meeting the challenge, we've got an enormous challenge against a team that's a proven finals performer, that's back in form and would certainly rate their chances.

"But for us it's to rediscover that effort and energy we had for 15-16 weeks earlier this year - the players are pretty focussed on that."

Eade is pleased with the mood around the club since Friday's belting and is confident the Bulldogs are about to re-capture their early-season spark.

The Bulldogs considered dropping forward Scott Welsh, but Eade backed him and captain Brad Johnson to regain their form.

"Teams that do well ... who make grand finals and players who do well are ones who meet that challenge head-on and don't baulk from it," Eade said.

"They react well to that pressure, but sometimes I don't think you can hide the pressure away from people.

"If you keep doing that, eventually when they're confronted by it, they're going to fall away - they need to confront that at some stage.

"The way they trained yesterday and the way they've gone about it, I'm certainly expecting a very spirited performance."

The Swans have already had their moment of truth, after the round-21 loss to Collingwood.

Defender Tadhg Kennelly has revealed coach Paul Roos met with the leadership group and told them to stop worrying about off-field matters, concentrating instead on the game itself.

Roos is not sure how much the change has helped, but he is confident it has made a difference as they have since beaten Brisbane and North Melbourne.

"Sometimes they can get a little bit waylaid with a lot of things off the field," the coach said.

"Expectations of players off the field are very high these days and are guys are extremely disciplined, (they) really look after each other and discipline each other and make sure things are going very well.

"Probably what we needed to do was try to focus on the game itself.

"It was really just time to re-focus for them and to say `guys, look, we'll worry about all the stuff off the field and you guys worry about the stuff on the field.

"It probably just took a bit of the burden off the players ... maybe it's helped a bit."

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP