Saturday's shock loss to Huntly took the gloss off North Bendigo's strong start to the HDFNL season, according to coach Rob Bennett.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
After leading basically all day, the Bulldogs went down by five points after Huntly playing coach Hamish Morcom kicked a goal at the 31-minute mark of the final term.
It was the Bulldogs first loss for 2024 and their first defeat to Huntly in six years.
The result saw North Bendigo slip from top spot to second on the table behind White Hills.
"It's disappointing because we'd done a lot of hard work in the past month to put ourselves in a good position and we were playing really good footy,'' Bennett said.
"We really embarrassed ourselves (against Huntly). The opposition deserved to beat us because they did what we wanted to do, but they did it better than us."
The Bulldogs were missing several first-choice players, but Bennett refused to use that as an excuse for his side's sub-par performance.
"I don't like to use injuries as an excuse, it's still 22 players on 22 players,'' he said.
"Things that we pride ourselves on we didn't do. That doesn't come down to the guys you have or don't have on the park, it comes down to following instructions and doing the basics, which they did better than us.
"Our defence has been fantastic the first month, but we were really poor in that area. Huntly were really good with their spread.
"I've wrapped the boys up over the past month for their work rate and their pace, but we looked like we had cement in our boots."
Bennett said he hoped to get "three or four" players back for this Saturday's home clash with Mt Pleasant.
The Blues had plenty of positive signs in their 74-point win over Colbinabbin on Saturday.
Non-one has been better for the reigning premiers than recruit Ben Bisset.
The centre half-forward has kicked 15 goals in five games, including six against the Hoppers.
"If we were picking an HDFNL inter-league side, he'd have to be centre half-forward,'' Mounts' coach Cam Carter said of Bisset.
"He's such a great competitor, he throws himself at everything and he just goes.
"He holds 80 per cent of the marks he goes for. He's a great player, a great bloke and he gives us good leadership."
A win for Mounts on Saturday would draw them within one win of North Bendigo on the ladder.
The teams split their two home and away encounters last year. North Bendigo won the round one battle at Atkins Street by six points, while Mounts won the return bout at Toolleen by 11 points.
It was Mounts who got the job done at the business end of the season when they edged out the Dogs by 14 points in the first semi-final at Elmore.
Mounts haven't beaten North Bendigo at North Bendigo since 2008.
Other round seven games in the HDFNL are Colbinabbin hosts Lockington-Bamawm United, Elmore is at home against Huntly and White Hills travels to Gunbower to tackle Leitchville-Gunbower.
