FREMANTLE coach Justin Longmuir has backed club champion Nat Fyfe to feature at the top level at some point this year, despite suffering yet another injury setback.
Longmuir said Fyfe had been a chance to return against Richmond, but ultimately played WAFL with Peel Thunder, suffering a hamstring injury in the first term.
The dual Brownlow medallist had been on the comeback trail from an arthroscope on his knee.
“I haven’t touched base with him yet, I’ll do that after on the way to the airport, but he’s disappointed. We felt like he was building really well, there was a little hiccup last week with his knee, and now he’s had another setback – he’ll be disappointed,” Longmuir said.
“He realises it’s a long season and there’s plenty of footy left. We think [he can come back]. He’s really confident with where his game was trending, his body was trending.
“We had a really strong discussion around bringing him in this week as well, but we knew it was probably going to be hot, we had other guys on managed minutes (Sean Darcy and Hayden Young), and we didn’t want him to be too underdone.
“We see it as a little speedhump. We’ll get it scanned and let you know, but our first thought is that it’s not overly serious.”
Longmuir was pleased with how his side worked its way into the game against Richmond, putting the foot down with a six-goal third term, resulting in the club’s biggest ever win over the Tigers, a 61-point margin.
“I thought we were slow to start both quarters in the first half, but I thought the second half was really professional and more like the way we want to play consistently, and the way we wanted the game to look today, in particular,” he said.
“There was a little bit of a tune-up (a reminder) at half-time, not focusing on what the scoreboard says, but focusing on implementing our brand of footy, and we know that starts in the contest and I thought we were inconsistent in the contest in the first half.
“Led by our leaders, we were much more consistent in the contest in the second half. I thought 50-50 balls, we put our name on it. We owned the footy, which gave us territory, then we defended our front half a bit better than what we did in the first half.”
Richmond coach Adem Yze said subbed-off spearhead Tom Lynch “copped a bit of a corkie”, but could have played on if required.
“‘Lynchy’ was a little bit sore at three-quarter time, could have played on, but it was an opportunity to get (sub forward) Jacob Bauer into the game and look after ‘Lynchy’,” Yze said.
“We’ve got a six-day break, get Jonty Faull some more game time in the last quarter against quality defenders, and as I said, that should hold us in good stead for the future.
“It’s bloody hot, he’s a bit old, and it was just too good of an opportunity to give our younger boys a go at playing together for a bit longer. So ‘Bowser’ (Bauer) gets an opportunity to play with Jonty Faull and Jacob Blight for a whole quarter against a really good defender, so we took that opportunity.”
The Tigers had gone blow for blow with the Dockers for a quarter and a half, but fell away drastically, conceding 12 of the final 13 goals of the game.
“That was the really disappointing part of the game. It felt like we were in the game at half-time, but we didn’t have the volume of entry that we’d like, that was sort of a red flag even at half-time,” Yze said.
“It’s pretty hard to stay in the game when you’re getting smashed around territory. But we were really pleased with our execution in the first half, we gave up a couple of goals just before half-time, and we felt we were in the game, but the second half just wasn’t to standard.
“We’ve had a couple of really ordinary third quarters this season, which we need to look at. We are a young list and a young team, whether we’re starting to think about the result a little bit too much – we had some really positive things we looked at around our ‘mental mastery’ last week, about staying in the game and engaged, not getting worried about the scoreboard against last year’s premiers.
“Whereas this week, felt like there was a bit of scoreboard pressure in that third quarter. Once the game got away from us, we lost our way a little bit. To Freo’s credit, they’re a bloody good team.”
