The Tigers, along with Melbourne, Fremantle and the Kangaroos, are still in the hunt for their first victory for 2007.
“It’s a long journey and we just have to make sure that we do things so we continue to improve,” Wallace said.
“That’s all we’ve ever been about as a football club - trying to continue to improve ourselves and develop what is fairly much a young core group. We have 30 of our 44 players that are under 24 years of age.”
Despite not recording a victory yet, Wallace says the match stats aren’t all negative.
“If you have a look at us and Sydney, from a statistical point of view we’ve been in front in our three games for as long as what Sydney’s been in front in their three games, and they’ve won two and lost by a point to the premiers,” Wallace said.
“We’ve lost all three of ours. So that’s clearly something that we need to continue to work on and we need to mature ourselves up so that when we get ourselves into a winning position to be able to take that home.”
Wallace believes the key to success is his charges learning how to control the momentum of the game.
“The biggest change in the game in this day and age is there is massive momentum swings in games of footy now,” Wallace says.
“I think that’s the nature of it. It’s become so hard running both ways. You’ll get periods in games where one side’s in control and then periods when the other side’s in control.
“What we clearly haven’t been able to do is ride home the advantage when we’ve had the momentum swings our way. We thought at the weekend we should have been more in front when it was our turn to have the momentum.”
Wallace insists that he won’t let external pressure such as media scrutiny affect the team.
“I walked straight into the players after the game and said ‘do you understand the nature of the way that we’ve lost this will open up the door and the scrutiny and the analysis will be there’,” Wallace said.
“We know where we’re at internally as a football club. We don’t react to external environment. What we do is go on doing what we do on a weekly basis. That’s what we’re in the business for and that’s what we’ll be doing again this week. Our job is not to react to what other people are saying.”
Wallace says building self-belief in the team, particularly in match-winning positions, will be crucial to the Tigers going forward.
“It’s like the six-foot putt in the major tournament. If you’ve been there and been through that time before and you can see it in your mind and you can see yourself knock it in and you know you have the confidence of being in that position before so you do it.
“If you’ve never been there before and it’s the first time you start looking at the bigger picture and maybe get a little bit nervous.
“Last year we were involved in 100-point floggings where it was embarrassing to be walking off the ground. That hasn’t been the circumstances we’ve been involved in this year but when you get into winning positions you want to win games. It’s a mental challenge to get that right.
Wallace says that just like his own side the Bulldogs have not played their best football yet this season.
“Neither club has played their best football, I think it’s fair to say. I think both clubs have had some good players not in their best form. What you’ll probably find is that Friday night one of the two clubs will get those players back into good form and obviously we’re hoping that’s us.”
