Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir said his Dockers looked “comfortable” with themselves during their 67-point drubbing at the hands of the Western Bulldogs on Saturday after they had “everyone pumping their tyres up” following their 92-point smashing of Melbourne in their last outing.
A shell-shocked Longmuir admitted post-match that he had a hard time making sense of the dramatic swing from one game to the next by his side.
“I can’t really explain it at the moment,” Longmuir said.
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“Going into the bye (last week) with a big win and everyone pumping their tyres up, I said to the players after the game it just looked like a team who was desperate to keep their season alive and a team who was comfortable playing each other.
“There was no warning signs for me during week … but I couldn’t fault the players’ attitude at training and their application to meetings.
“We have to dig a bit deeper as to why … we’ve got some soul-searching to do after that.
“We can’t accept it. We need to understand why and we need to learn from it.
“It’s a good reminder that the opposition you’re coming up against are not going to give you any favours for having a good win or where you are on the ladder.”
The Bulldogs comfortably won the inside-50 count 60-46 and even without Aaron Naughton and Sam Darcy in attack, they still managed to find 10 individual goalkickers and register their biggest score of the year against one of the best backlines in the league.
“Weight of numbers and the speed and at the end we got in our own heads and didn’t work together and they (Bulldogs) were running on top of the ground and full of confidence and pulling kicks to space,” Longmuir said.
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“It looked like they were really in sync. I would say that we hung our backs out to dry a bit today with the supply that was coming and the way we defended up the ground.
“Clearly something wasn’t right … we got beaten in all aspects that we wanted to compete in today.
“What they were able to get out of their contest wins compared to ours was chalk and cheese.”
The fact that the Dockers lost the tackle count convincingly 49-62 despite also winning far less disposals (302-376) was “really disappointing” for Longmuir.
“We had 11 guys at half-time without a tackle,” he said.
“Through that period where they kicked 12 of 13 goals, our pressure was 1.6, or something along those lines, and that hasn’t been us.”
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As for the new holding-the-ball interpretation, Longmuir said the competition was “still finding water level with it”.
“I think it’s evolving and I don’t think anyone could say they’re overly clear on it,” Longmuir said.
“I thought there was some umpiring decisions that were pretty red hot.”
While Longmuir stressed none of the decisions had an impact on the lopsided result, he didn’t rule out contacting the umpiring department during the week for clarification.
Meanwhile, Heath Chapman was a late withdrawal due to a hamstring complaint, but given his extensive history with hamstring injuries, Longmuir said it was a “smart decision for his long-term health” to pull him from the side and was confident he would face Gold Coast next week.
Veteran forward Michael Walters had to be subbed out in the second quarter due to a hamstring injury, but Longmuir wasn’t sure as to its severity.
— NCA NewsWire
