A fuming Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade has sunk the boots into a handful of his players for their failure to press up on their Geelong opponents in the crucial closing minutes of Saturday's qualifying final at the MCG.

Leading by 35 points at three-quarter time, the Cats attempted to put up the shutters in the last term but ended up conceding the initiative to the Bulldogs who were not without a show in the final 10 minutes.

Clinging to a 14-point lead entering time-on the Cats started to chip the ball around and Eade was furious that they were given too much latitude by a number of his players whom he declined to name.

"There's a couple of individuals and it seems to be a constant with them," Eade told his post-match media conference.

"I don't know if we need to have some extra memory, some extra 'K' we can put in there to make their attention span a bit greater."

"I've spoken to a couple of players after the game and said we're sick of telling you every week what you need to do in that situation."

"It's just a concentration thing - one of them was just running around in loose space."

Eade was at pains to point out, however, that it was not the way the contest finished, but the way it started that really hurt the Bulldogs.

After scoring the opening goal of the match, the Bulldogs conceded seven of the next eight and were playing catch-up from then on.

"You can't give good teams a start - we gave them four goals in the first quarter and kicked the first two of the third quarter and let them in for a couple of easy ones at the end and we're six goals down," he said.

"You just can't afford to do that against good teams, so that's more the issue - we've just got to start well and that's going to be our focus next week."

"(Another) difference in the end, apart from the start, was that they just used the ball better than we did."

"I think their skills were pretty good and we just turned the ball over a little bit too much at times and some shots at goal (by Adam Cooney and Brad Johnson) that we should have been able to take might have made it a bit more interesting."

"Good sides take their chances, don't they, and we didn't do that."

Eade said