Hawks and Saints games will tell us plenty.

I was struck in the first half how we were able to match the dogs run, and outplay them at their own game. We lost partly because of luck with some lousy umpiring, but also because they were more effective with centre clearances and scored easily several times. Still we did not see the Dogs at their blistering best that blew Adelaide away.

As for the Cats, they did not hit their straps against us either. Did they just do enough to win, or are we learning to stop these top teams run?

Over the next fortnight we'll complete our run against last season's top four. If we can counter them as we challenged the Dogs, we'll know we are really going places.

If we can cut out these costly errors we will win games. The bulldogs scored 1.1 from direct turnovers from kick outs. That score being the difference at the final siren.