THERE'S taking a big mark up on someone's shoulders, there's kicking a goal from the boundary line in the pocket and then there is wrapping two arms around an opposition player, holding on, seeing the ball spill free and watching your team whip it away.

Jason Akermanis does the first wherever he can, and has made a career of the second. But the third thing makes him feel just as good. "There's actually nothing quite like it," said the Western Bulldog last night.

"It's as good as you can give back to the team, really. When you don't have the ball, it's probably the one thing you can do that can help."

It's quickly becoming a theme. Last week, Collingwood reminded Geelong what it felt like to lose, in part because its players wrenched Cats to ground 85 times. At the same time, the Bulldogs looked over their first loss, to the Kangaroos and decided they needed to get a little more physical.

It wasn't all, explained Akermanis, about laying the actual tackles. It was about being in positions to lay tackles, watching the player ahead of the ball, even manning the mark with some energy.

It was also about doing it all day long, which the Bulldogs did, although there was a patch in the third quarter when it became almost the single most important thing they were doing, the thing that kept them in the game and that then turned it completely their way.

At half-time, Hawthorn was losing by 24 points; eight minutes into the third term it had three unanswered goals on the board, and was full of run. Then Akermanis laid three tackles. Adam Cooney added four more, Daniel Giansiracusa laid two and plenty of others chipped in. This from a team that began the afternoon as the third worst tackling team this season.

By the end of the third quarter, the Bulldogs had added 21 new tackles to their count, they were four goals ahead, and only two of their players didn't have at least one tackle to his name. Tim Callan, who went off just before half-time with a sore knee, and 10 seconds after half-time with a hamstring strain, had a reason. The other was Tom Williams, whose mind was on trying to outbody Buddy Franklin further up the ground. He got his tackle in before the final siren, though.

It was the sort of match that made you wonder why "tackles" takes up only one column in the statistics sheet, when there are so many different applications and meanings they can have.

You can chase a team all day, have 60 tackles and still lose by a lot. Then again you can tackle to do more than merely pressure a side — you can do it to attack, to create opportunities and to set your teammates off and running.

Rodney Eade agreed. "There's no doubt," said the coach. "That's where every stat you get by itself doesn't tell you the whole story. You need to have another stat and there's no other stat, really, about pressure.

"But it's intent to man the mark, it's intent to man up, it's the ability to block some space and really to close their space at times. It's not so much the tackling that can force the error, and you don't get an actual stat for it, but I thought our guys' ability to man them up quickly today was really pleasing.

"Aka was part of that, he tackled well. Giansiracusa's tackling was sensational, Matthew Boyd. There were a few players who were really hard at it, and that's across the board. Dylan Addison, for such a young player, is probably the hardest we've got in the team and he can really set an example for us."

Akermanis gained eight kilograms over the pre-season, one of many Bulldogs to get a lot bigger and stronger. Ten weeks into the season, he doesn't feel as fast as he used to, but he feels much more certain that if he does grab someone, he'll be able to hold on.

When he tried to apply his first tackle yesterday, the player slipped away and he didn't feel too great. He went on to lay seven, to feel a bit better about life and not start to worry about whether he could make his next attempts stick.

"I've certainly been working on it," he said. "I made seven and I missed one. The one you miss is probably the one you think back on and don't want to miss, but I really do pride myself on the tackling.

"This year early in the season it hasn't been so good, but my offence has been fine. If I can get that right, both sides of it, it's a positive. And it was for all our guys. It was our biggest focus this week — if you're going to beat this mob your pressure needs to be up.

"When you get stronger, you can take the beatings but you can also hand them out. I think what you're seeing is a side that has confidence in their bodies and confidence in their physicality.

"You're seeing results because we're winning the hard ball and winning the clearances. We're winning the things that towards the end of last year just dropped too far away."