Lake goes with ebb and flow





BRIAN Lake is happy to move the conversation on — there is another battle to be won this weekend, and no point living in the past. Yet there might still be some life in the experiment of this back going forward.

A typo at a sponsors' night on Wednesday listed the Bulldogs' full-back as "Brain Lake", but yesterday it was his brain fade he was still being asked to explain, after he capped a strong mark at the top of the goal square against Carlton last Sunday by inexplicably handballing sideways to Daniel Giansiracusa, who was swamped.

"I can blame Gia (for calling for the ball), but I handballed it," Lake said. "I'm down back again now, so I'll just worry about punching the ball away."

Yet it is Lake's strength in the air and preparedness to back himself that makes him an occasional option in a makeshift attack, which coach Rodney Eade again breathed a heavy sigh over yesterday, repeating that the Bulldogs don't have a tall forward and as a consequence are often forced to manufacture goals.

"At times you'd like to have someone be able to take a mark," Eade said. "Brian took a couple on the weekend, it's certainly an option for us, but it's something we'll work week-to-week."

The emergence — fitness permitting — of Tom Williams in defence gives the Dogs the option of rotating some height through attack. And in Lake they have someone who, Sunday's slip-up aside, has been there before.

"Yeah, that's a long time ago," he said of a junior career in South Australia as a forward. "I'm not a kid any more." And perhaps not just a full-back either.