Fremantle Dockers star Nat Fyfe is up for the challenge of taking on Western Bulldogs’ Marcus Bontempelli

Fremantle midfielder Nat Fyfe could wind back the clock this weekend in a head-to-head battle with Western Bulldogs champion Marcus Bontempelli.

Fyfe’s famous battles with Bontempelli, Patrick Dangerfield and other star midfielders of his era defined some of the dual Brownlow medallist’s best years.

He says his body is feeling better and better each week he runs out a full game and is ready for another test against a Bulldogs midfield likely to regain Tom Liberatore.

The Dockers won the clearance count but lost post-clearance ground-balls in a western derby demolition at the weekend and are staring down an on-ball brigade that last week helped flip the Bulldogs’ fortunes.

Fyfe said he is “definitely” ready to continue his rivalry with Bontempelli.

“He is playing some good footy, I think he kicked a couple of goals on the weekend too,” he said.

“Another big challenge, and I always look forward to playing against, testing yourself, against players who are in good form.

“I think it’s a really big challenge. Their win-loss potentially isn’t reflective of how well they are going and they have got some All-Australian midfielders with Bontempelli, Liberatore should come back, McRae, the list goes on.

“This will be a big challenge for some of our younger midfielders and our midfield in general, but we have got Joel Corey on our side, he was at the Dogs previously. We think this is a challenge we’re up for.”

Bontempelli is yet again among the favourites to win this year’s Brownlow. He had 24 disposals last week and kicked three goals, has hit the scoreboard in all but one of his matches this season and drove the Dogs’ turnaround against St Kilda.

It is an instant revival the Dockers need to emulate after their derby humiliation.

Their biggest issue has been turning forward entries into scores. Like the rest of the club’s leaders, Fyfe lamented the connection between the forwards and the midfielders and admitted injury woes in the forward line have hurt them.

Sam Switkowski and Michael Frederick both missed at the weekend and Jye Amiss has been ruled out of Saturday night’s clash with concussion.

“Our forward line mix has been changing every week, so there are some frustrations around our scoring, we want to be able to capitalise more on our entries,” Fyfe said.

“And having a rotation of our forwards doesn’t allow that synergy to build.

“There are some injury factors that are out of our control, but hopefully we can get some continuity with the six that will allow us to be more predictable with our forward entries and kick scores from that.”

Captain Alex Pearce flatly denied in the wake of the Eagles defeat his side was worn out by back-to-back losses in South Australia, but Fyfe said playing in — and losing — big games takes its toll.

“We don’t hide behind any excuse, but there is a cumulative effect of playing in big games and not quite getting the results,” he said.

“We probably need to acknowledge that at some level, maybe coming back from Adelaide we didn’t respond as well as we would have liked too.

“You’re human, you play games, the emotions are really close to the surface and you don’t quite get the result, that means the review doesn’t go the way you would like it to go and potentially there is cumulative effect of putting in maximum efforts and not getting those results.”