Bob Murphy has denied reports that player in-fighting is threatening to derail the Western Bulldog season.

On Monday, David Schwarz said on SEN’s The Run Home that there are a few off-field issues bubbling away under the surface at Whitten Oval that are having an impact on the on-field performance.

“There are players down there that aren’t seeing eye-to-eye on a number of issues, and some of them aren’t footy related,” Schwarz said.

The Bulldogs have lost four of their past five matches and face North Melbourne on Saturday night, but Murphy told SEN Breakfast that he only became aware of the issue after reading a tweet from Herald Sun chief football writer Mark Robinson.

“There’s obviously plenty of noise around the club at the moment. It’s our turn at the moment and you bring it upon yourselves with the way we’ve lost in the last couple of weeks,” he said.

“I checked my phone a couple of nights ago and Robbo’s tweeted (that) Ox is running with this story that there’s infighting at the Dogs,

“I turned to my wife and said who are they talking about? I genuinely don’t know. Last night we had a team dinner…everyone was there, everyone stayed til the end.

“It’s a non-issue.”

Murphy, who is currently sidelined with a hamstring injury, described any questioning of the club’s spirit as “insulting”.

“It’s a ferocious, unrelenting and accountable sport and profession,” he said.

“There’s always tension – 45 players, 22 spots, the business model for morale is a tough one.

“We’ve got a great spirit at our footy club and for that to be challenged at the moment externally, that’s when you get protective, and it’s insulting because it doesn’t reflect our life.”

Murphy said that the challenge is now to quickly regain the confidence that saw them cut a swathe through the finals series last year.

“When you lose the way we have the last two weeks – human nature of course you lose confidence,” he said.

“Externally it’s always big, broad brush strokes. It’s the premiership hangover or its infighting. Inside the club we go the other way. We don’t sit in there and go how do we deal with premiership hangover? That’s not our world at all.

“The thing we have to be careful of internally is that you’re not trying to fix 1000 little things, you get some focus areas to get on top of.”