But although the Roos' backs can be happy they won't have to face anything like their recent nemeses Jonathan Brown and Daniel Bradshaw on Sunday, the club's assistant coach John Lamont knows the Dogs' smaller attacking set-up can present its own problems.
"Although we came away with the points last week, there's no doubt we've really struggled with Brown and Bradshaw in the past couple of years," Lamont admitted.
"Looking at it on the surface, the Bulldogs might have a set up that suits our smaller defence a bit better but they are a very talented unit. Players like Hahn, Murphy, Johnson, Akermanis -- they all have a good change of direction, they are good on the ground and they are all strong overhead.
"So not having to worry about a couple of really big, strong guys like we did with the Lions last week does help our backline a bit but we'd be kidding ourselves if we thought it was going to be any easier this week."
Where Lamont is hopeful the Roos can take advantage of the Dogs is in their own forward options.
North will take plenty of tall timber into the match, with big man David Hale enjoying career-best form this season and Drew Petrie creating havoc wherever he's placed.
Then there's the returning Nathan Thompson, who Lamont says has benefited from a concentrated block of training over the past three weeks in a bid to get his body right for the pointy end of the season.
"Thommo's done a great job to come back from his knee reconstruction last year but as the season's gone on he's had a couple of problems surface," Lamont said.
"He had to have the cartilage in his knee cleaned up a few weeks back and he also had a bursar at the back of his knee that just affected his power to push off his man.
"We brought him back after that but we just felt his fitness and power might have dropped off prior to his clean-up because he couldn't do the weight work and the power training to manage his injuries.
"Now he's done that we feel he's in a better state than a month to six weeks ago and he's in a good position to have a very good finish to the season and give us an extra bit of potency up forward in the crunch time of the year.
"Hopefully that can start to pay dividends on Sunday afternoon."
