Even though his team came away with two points from the 2022 AFLW season’s first drawn match on Tuesday night, Head Coach Cameron Joyce admits the draw felt “a little bit” like a loss.

Leading by 24 points heading into the final quarter, the SUNS couldn’t hold off a spirited Western Bulldogs fightback with the teams unable to split at the final siren.

Despite giving up the lead in the final quarter, Joyce said it was important to recognise the team’s fantastic efforts from the first three quarters.

“I think for three quarters we did so much right off the back of last week's game,” Joyce said post-match.

“Our ability to bounce back through our actions was the most important thing and I thought the girls did a fantastic job on that to be ahead by four goals at three quarter time playing the way we want to play.

“Things were going just as we would have liked and then the challenge at three quarter time was to be able to keep that going.

“The Bulldogs obviously came back at us and came back strong and we understand the capability and the talent that the Dogs have.

“We always keep saying that we've got to play our way longer than the opposition and we didn't today and that's why we ended up with two points each.”

The result put the SUNS in eighth position on the ladder and just two points outside the top six, a marked improvement on last season’s winless campaign.

With just three matches remaining in the regular season, Joyce said the team couldn’t afford to look any further ahead than this weekend’s match against St Kilda.

“I just said to the girls that we’ve got a four or five day turnaround to the Saints in Melbourne on Sunday and that's what we're focused on,” he said.

“You can look at all the permutations and combinations but we’ve just got to worry about controlling what we can control.

“That's preparing as well as we can, recover well, have a good few days to review and preview and get down to Melbourne and start the way we started tonight.”