Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge is keenly aware the helter-skelter pace his hard-working Bulldogs are playing at the moment is unlikely to be sustainable through the whole season and they need to find a better balance and tempo in their game.

But he also believes that game is likely to cause serious headaches for all teams in the AFL after his team belted the previously undefeated Crows by 57 points, after leading at one stage by as much as 75 points. "I don't think you can go lightning quick for four quarters every week," he said.

"We don't go out with that objective; we are learning to control the footy and tempo occasionally. We still get into situations where we go quick and we shouldn't because we are not capable of transitioning.

"It's a learning curve for us, so we have thrown the kitchen sink and we would rather be where we are at the moment and really challenging sides with our ball movement and transition than build up to that from going slow. Now we need to find a balance."

That said he also thought the Dogs played as well as they had since he had taken over.

"I think our tenacity and commitment to the physicality of the game was as good as it has been over the last few months, so to do that and then get outside and use the footy and connect and cause some havoc in our forward 50 is a good combination to have," he said.

"You challenge them to keep it up and we are in exploration mode – we think we can continue to cause headaches against anyone we play and it's a big challenge against the Swans this week, who flew home against Fremantle so we know what we are in for. We would like to think we give a better account of ourselves this week than last week against the Hawks."

Beveridge said it was only early in the season and the narrative of teams was still being written but he thought the win over the Crows would prove significant. They are now 3-1 and face the Swans –  also 3-1 – next week in Sydney.

"I would like to think it is significant, it is only early in the year though so you can't get carried away but it's good to beat a team that's been playing extremely good footy," he said. "Last week we had a little bit of misfortune throughout the day and the risk today was did it knock us around a bit with our belief after all the things we had been trying to implement in recent times? The answer to that was no."