The Western Bulldogs will persist with playing developing tall Aaron Naughton as a forward in Round 1, as they attempt to find a spike in scoring.

Naughton showed promising signs in the Dogs’ JLT Community Series match against St Kilda recently, kicking three goals and providing a strong target.

Despite a knee injury to experienced defender Dale Morris, senior coach Luke Beveridge will deploy the 19-year-old in attack against the Swans at Marvel Stadium.

“You’ve got to win games, you can’t save them from the start,” Beveridge told SEN Breakfast.

“We see Aaron (Naughton) at the moment as a promising key forward and he’s got all the attributes that tell us that there’s a big chance that he’s going to be a significantly influential player down there - we’d like to persist with that.”

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Depending on the make-up of the opposition, and the state of each game, the Bulldogs will be able to use Naughton at either end of the ground.

“At the moment, we’d like Aaron to play forward and at different times you come up against some threatening key forwards who you have to cater for,” Beveridge said.

“But if it happens in a game that we’re going down a path where we’re struggling back there and we can move Aaron back, that’s always an option.

“There are always contingencies, but we’ve got to find a way to score and in the four years that I’ve coached, we haven’t been able to piece together any uniformity for various reasons.”

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