It doesn’t appear as though Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir’s message is getting through to his players. Photo: GETTY IMAGES
It took Fremantle precisely 13 days to revert to its pathetic, uncompetitive self on the weekend.
But as soft and lame as the Dockers were against Melbourne in Round 6, even their harshest critics could not have foreseen what they were going to serve up on Friday night against St Kilda at Marvel Stadium.
As the Dockers so often do, they responded to their shock loss to the Demons by taking out a mid-table side in Adelaide in the cosy confines of their Optus Stadium home.
However, that result was more or less expected by the wider footy public. With their mental resilience already in question this year due to their terrible losses to Geelong, Sydney and Melbourne, the real challenge for the Dockers would come seven days later against the out-of-form Saints.
Fremantle headed into its clash with St Kilda as favourite, having won four of its previous five games, while the Saints had lost three consecutive matches by an average of eight goals.
This writer tipped St Kilda to win due to the highly dubious nature of Fremantle’s mental toughness, but the alarming manner in which it succumbed to the Saints was nothing short of farcical.
In perfect conditions under a roof, the Dockers registered their third-worst half-time score of 1.1 (7) and their first two goals were separated by more than two quarters of play. They finished with a paltry tally of 5.3 (33) and lost by a whopping 61 points.
Fremantle is supposed to be one of the best stoppage teams in the league, but were made to look third-rate by an OK St Kilda midfield which absolutely demolished the Dockers in clearances 50-22, centre clearances 13-5, inside 50s 61-34, contested possessions 151-103 and disposals 379-286.
A mere fortnight after questioning his team’s toughness and labelling its performance as below standard in handing the Demons their first win of the year, after they started 0-5, Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir’s side was not only at it again, but perhaps plummeted to even greater depths than previously thought possible.
It was embarrassing to see Fremantle meekly turn itself over and show its soft underbelly once more and their over-reliance on superstar duo Caleb Serong and Andrew Brayshaw was glaring.
The pair had averaged 30 and 29 disposals respectively prior to Friday night, but against the Saints, Serong only had 15 touches and Brayshaw 18. With those two completely shut out, nobody else volunteered to step up and fill the void.
Hot on the heels of the Dockers’ unacceptable performance against Melbourne, this column questioned whether, after six years in the job, Longmuir was the right man to toughen up his side mentally and, by extension, the long-term coaching option for Fremantle.
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And now it appears even he is unsure of his role, having only taken the Dockers to one finals series so far after their spectacular implosion last season which saw them lose their last four games to drop from third to ninth on the ladder.
Longmuir admitted he would be questioning himself and the part he played in his side’s latest on-field fiasco.
“The first thing I’ll look at after a performance like that, and any good leader should, is what did I get wrong?,” Longmuir said.
“I’m not sitting here blaming the players. I’ve got to look at my own performance this week and am I contributing to us being an inconsistent team?
“So of course I’m going to question myself.”
Given the unique nature of Longmuir’s contractual structure, which, as it currently stands, will see him transition to an “ongoing employment agreement” at the end of this season, and the consistently erratic nature of Fremantle’s formline, it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that he could very well be coaching for his career soon if this trend continues.
After Friday night’s loss, he once again questioned his side’s mental fortitude.
“When we get challenged early in games, I’m not sure we’re up for the fight. You can’t be that team,” he said.
“The main message after the game to the players is: are we up for the challenge that an AFL season confronts us with?
“We can’t be that team that has the high highs and the low lows.
“We want to be a really consistent team … and the results would show we’re not at the moment.”
Surely after so long in the job, Longmuir is primarily responsible for that? He even admitted that he couldn’t rule out that his side was taking seemingly inferior sides lightly.
“We’ll have to look at that, clearly,” Longmuir said.
The problem is we heard similar things from Longmuir just two weeks earlier after their loss to Melbourne.
“I didn’t think we were tough enough,” he said on April 19.
“We didn’t put enough pressure on them after they won the ball.
“They were able to just bounce out of our forward 50 way too easily.
“We could have defended a lot better than we did today.”
Why, then, did they produce an even more diabolical performance so soon after? Is the message getting through?
Fremantle’s list is universally rated quite highly, and many expected it to make the finals this year, and potentially even finish in the top four.
If the Dockers hierarchy thinks their talented playing group isn’t realising its full potential under Longmuir, then it wouldn’t be surprising at all if a move was made in the next four or five months.
After all, clubs have to strike while the iron is hot in this cut-throat environment, especially if they believe their list has a premiership within it.
