With blood still spurting out of his head, and resembling John Rambo under Soviet interrogation, Andrew Brayshaw still managed a semblance of humility, of calm and of coherence in an on-field interview on Saturday night. Brayshaw is that kind of player and it had been that kind of game. It had been an intense, occasionally spiteful contest, the sort of game Fremantle have coughed up too many times under coach Justin Longmuir. But they were the more composed and tougher side against the highly rated Hawthorn. The Dockers laid more than 100 tackles, 14 of them coming from Brayshaw.
Longmuir didn’t have his head split open but whenever he loses, it always feels like it’s his head on the chopping block. Whenever someone like St Kilda’s Ross Lyon has a narrow loss, it’s a coaching masterclass. When Longmuir loses, even when they go down narrowly to a resurgent Sydney at the SCG, he’s suddenly the coach under the most pressure. In so many ways, Longmuir is an easy target. He doesn’t have the “aura”, the polish, the force of personality and the playing record of many other senior coaches. He’s on a rolling contract. And he’s on the other side of the country to most of the football media.
