Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir has admitted his side “wasn’t up to it” in its 20-point semi-final loss to Collingwood at the MCG on Saturday night.
The Dockers’ season ended at the hands of the Magpies in front of rowdy packed house of over 90,000 at the MCG – and a hostile, pro-Collingwood atmosphere of that.
Speaking to reporters post-match, Longmuir said he thought his troops struggled to execute the basics in the contest and under pressure, and ultimately, simply didn’t handle the heat of the big stage as well as the Pies.
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“It was a big occasion in terms of 90,000, crowd against us and I thought they had a lot more players who handled that situation over us,” he said.
“A lot went wrong, but they just handled the basics of the game a lot better than we did.
“I said to the players after the game, unless you win the grand final you leave disappointed. That’s how we should feel right now, disappointed that we weren’t up to the challenge and weren’t up to Collingwood tonight.”
Asked if it can be seen as a good learning experience for his young side, Longmuir said: “We have to.
“That was my message to the players after the game – that’s the level we want to execute under. We weren’t up to it tonight, our execution let us down.
“Every time we go to work over the pre-season that’s got to be in the back of our mind, that’s the level we need to execute under. We had some players who were up to the level tonight but not enough.”
It comes as Fremantle prepares for a busy trade and free agency period, with several players linked to moves including Rory Lobb, Blake Acres, Griffin Logue.
Longmuir expects the club will learn the fate of such names imminently.
“There’s always movement, we’ll work through that over the coming months,” he said.
“The time frame is going to come pretty soon. We’ve got the players at most for another week and then they’re off on holiday.
“I’d imagine we’ll get some answers soon and we’ll work through that. Trade period starts after the ‘granny’ and we want to make sure we’re ready for that.
“Those conversations will happen in the next week or so I’d imagine.”
Meanwhile the Dockers have been heavily linked to young Demon Luke Jackson amid widespread reports the gun ruckman will seek a move back to Western Australia.
However the Fremantle coach wasn’t willing to add to the speculation.
“These things will work itself out. I don’t know whether now is the right time to be talking about it,” he said of the club’s pursuit of Jackson.
“I’m sure there will be opportunities once the dust settles to talk about list management decisions, getting my head around the loss tonight first.”
The Docker were without Nat Fyfe against Collingwood due to injury to continue an injury-ravaged season from the skipper, restricted to just seven senior games.
But Longmuir was confident Fyfe could get back to his best form in 2023, revealing he would’ve been close to returning in the coming weeks had the team advanced further through the finals.
“We’ve seen some good signs that he’s got a lot of things right,” the Fremantle coach said.
“Get on top of the soft tissue and stuff and give him a really good pre-season … he could’ve possibly played next week or at least the week after, so he’s close to being in good health and that’ll set him up really well for the off-season.”
Longmuir admitted the Magpies’ game style has “changed a lot” under Craig McRae compared to when the Freo coach spent two seasons under Nathan Buckley as an assistant, also noting how much more experience the black and white had on the park.
“It’s a really experienced group, they had a lot of men playing today and they played really tough footy,” he said.
“We’ll learn from some of the things they did to us today, that’s where we want to get to as a club. They’ve had a lot of experience playing in that environment as well, and I reckon that’s the first time everyone apart from Dave (Mundy) and Sonny (Walters) have tasted that for us.
“We’ll learn from a lot of different things.”
