THE Western Bulldogs have admitted they feared a post-premiership plummet.

Bulldogs football director Chris Grant revealed club bosses identified the potential to slide - because of their young list demographic - in a review conducted in the weeks after the historic 2016 Grand Final triumph.

“We were mindful of our vulnerability,” Grant told the Herald Sun.

“We are under no illusion and we weren’t even at the end of 2016 - it was amazing, incredible that we won the premiership, for a lot of different reasons - but we had one month of unbelievable footy.

“All of the moons aligned for four weeks, but when we stripped it back and reviewed at the end of the year … we thought, ‘We’ve actually got some challenges in front of us’.

“We knew we were going to lose some experience - Matty Boyd and Bob Murphy - and so our development and improvement was not simply going to be in a straight line, particularly if we lost key, experienced players to injury.”

The 14th-placed Bulldogs meet red-hot Melbourne at Etihad Stadium and are in danger of missing the September action for the second straight year.

Grant said while finals remained an aspiration, the blooding of younger players would start paying dividends next year.

“We’ve actually got to start to play them … because by 2019 we’re going to be more advanced,” he said.

The Bulldogs’ average age on Grand Final day was 24.41 years, the third youngest premiership side since 1979.

“We weren’t under any illusion that just because we’ve won a premiership it’s now hunky dory and off we go and we should be performing like a premiership team for 2017,” Grant said.

“We were already very aware that it was going to be a pretty tough year.

“A few of them (the younger players) were going to have some challenges with their game and their one-wood (manic pressure and slick handball movement), the competition was starting to become aware of.

“We don’t have a Dangerfield-Ablett-Selwood midfield, so we know we have to rely on everybody playing pretty close to their best to perform pretty well.

“That was always going to be a problem when you’ve got so many players under 50 games.

“It’s just not going to happen. So when we looked at the demographic of our list, we knew that 2017 and maybe in 2018, we were going to have some challenges based on if we don’t play players and start to actually provide an opportunity at that senior level sooner rather than later, we are going to be in this for too long.

“But it’s not just that we are young. We know that from a contested ball situation, if we don’t get that right we won’t win. We’re not shying away from those stats.”

Asked if the club was equipped to handle its first flag in 62 years, Grant said: “Where we weren’t as equipped as we would have liked was in the experience within in our team. When you lose Boyd and then Murphy and you’ve got to blood a new leadership group, there’s just a knock-on affect.

“When you look at the teams that have been able to back it up, and they may not win it the following year but they have had another solid year … they were able to rely on the maturity of their list to have another crack at it.

“It’s really hard when you go from winning a premiership, but know you are exposed by an incredibly young team.”