Midfielder Daniel Cross has taken a break from sleeping with his wife to enhance the Western Bulldogs' AFL premiership prospects.

Instead, his night-time companion is a machine that ices and compresses his ankle while he sleeps.

It aids the healing process from an injury sustained in round 19 that threatened to end his season.

"I had it in the bed and (wife) Sam took a side seat for a while and I'm still using it now, so we'll get her back in once the season's over," Cross said on Tuesday.

"It sits beside the bed and it keeps her up, she's not too happy about it.

"But there are things we do and she sacrifices more things than I do really, so she's happy to put it to a good cause."

A much tougher sacrifice for Cross would have been to watch the Bulldogs contest their finals campaign without him, which was the initial prognosis.

"I was first told that it was probably going to be season over," he said

"... You work so hard during off-season, pre-season and during the year to play in these type of games and to think that it might have been over was quite devastating."

But, by the time he underwent surgery days later, his prospects had brightened considerably.

With the help of almost constant attention to his rehabilitation, Cross made it back for the final round of the regular season and has played in the Bulldogs' two finals so far.

His effort in keeping Brisbane prime mover Simon Black to a season-low 14 disposals in last Friday night's semi-final was a big part of the `Dogs' comfortable win.

He expects another shutdown role on one of St Kilda's many gun midfielders in this Friday night's preliminary final.

"Who it's going to be, I'm not sure, but they've got so many through there that it's probably going to be more a team effort than anything," he said.

"We've spoken about that right through and there's probably 10 guys that can go through there, so I'm not the only one that will probably have a (defensive) job.

"The main thing is we have to win contested ball this week and I'm going to have to be in there getting my hands and knees dirty to help us win."

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