Bears Lagoon-Serpentine coach Jake Wilkinson is confident his side can win the LVFNL premiership despite the loss of star full-forward Josh Mellington.
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The former Fremantle Dockers forward is expected to miss the rest of the season because of a serious hamstring injury, leaving a big hole in the Bears' forward structure.
Prior to last round, Mellington had kicked 93 of the Bears' 150 goals for the season, or 62 per cent of their goals.
In their first game without Mellington on Saturday the Bears kicked 13 goals in heavy conditions in a strong win over Inglewood - a sign that pleased the coach.
"We feel like we're a good team,'' Wilkinson said.
"We'd love to have Josh play every game, but one player doesn't make a team.
"The next player will step up and that's going to be our focus going forward."
Wilkinson's plan, at this stage, is to keep their structure and game style as normal as possible.
Against Inglewood, Wilkinson resisted the temptation to move regular centre half-forward Andrew Gladman to full-forward.
It paid dividends with Gladman kicking four goals and he was one of his side's best players.
"We wanted to keep our forward structure similar to what we had,'' Wilkinson said.
"Andrew has been building into that centre half-forward role really nicely.
"We rotated that full-forward line around throughout the day and it certainly looked different without Josh, but it was nice to be able to play a forward line where it was six versus six rather than six versus seven or eight which had happened at times when Josh was playing."
While the Bears have lost a key player forward of the ball, their backline remains a strength of their game.
Marong is the only team to have scored 100 points or more against the Bears this season and in their current five-game winning streak the highest score they've conceded is 61 points.
One of the key cogs of the Bears back six is former Eaglehawk defender Tyler Miles, who was best afield against Inglewood.
Miles has been in the Bears' best players six times in 10 games this season.
"Tyler is playing great,'' Wilkinson said.
"He's reliable and consistent and mops up everything across half-back for us."
The next three games will shape the Bears season as they try to earn the all-important double-chance for the finals.
They're away to fifth-placed Newbridge, home to ladder-leader Marong and home to second-placed Bridgewater.
At the very least the Bears need to defeat Newbridge and Bridgewater to stay in control of their top-three destiny.
"We had a few away (against Inglewood) through unavailability, so we should get them back (for the Newbridge game),'' Wilkinson said.
"We just need to keep building as we head into these big games coming up.
"It will be a good test for us... we're looking forward to it."
The other big game this weekend is at Pyramid Hill where the fourth-placed home side hosts Marong.
Just eight points split the two teams when they met in round three.
