On Saturday night, Fremantle played a Richmond team whose year of injury and losses couldn’t be un-clustered with a crowbar and a Dusty fend-off (although put in a call to the AFL CEO and he may tell you that they’ve never been better). Josh Treacy kicked a career-best five goals, Andrew Brayshaw and Hayden Young combined for 60 possessions and three goals, and they handed out a pretty decisive pounding, winning by eight-goals and interest.
To follow up last week’s win in Sydney so matter-of-factly suggests there is nothing illegitimate about Fremantle’s position in the AFL top four. It may not carry the same editorial weight as an eight-month discussion of the preternatural Harley Reid, but the fact that this Dockers team appears to be evolving into a genuine contender to run deep into September would seem, even to the untrained observer, worth at least a couple more pages in the back of the West Australian.
Win next week in Tasmania against Hawthorn and they may just start to accumulate the same level of local press attention as they did when losing to Carlton in controversial circumstances in April, albeit without the burlesque conspiracy theories and pull-out posters of players who give up costly free kicks.
While sitting on the sixth line of betting for the premiership, this team has all the qualities you’d want for a team to run deep into September. Even if they fall short this year, the Dockers should be set up for a sustained tilt at the club’s first flag.
To look at each club’s age profile is to believe that it is Fremantle’s list that provides the most cause for hope. The Dockers’ midfield and forward lines are propelled by players born well after the club entered the league in 1995. Jye Amiss and Treacy are 20 and 21 respectively, Luke Jackson is 22, Caleb Serong, Jordan Clark and Hayden Young, 23, and Brayshaw 24.
While Amiss and Treacy have together addressed the club’s offensive issues (Fremantle’s 16.9.105 was the fourth time they’ve cracked 100 this year), they remain a team built largely on a frugal defence. Just two years ago, the Dockers were able to win 15 games without a serious forward line, and this year they are one the league’s second-stingiest defences – only Sydney have given up less points, but the gap is just 15 points across 16 rounds.
Even defensive telamones Luke Ryan and Alex Pearce (who is hoping to return next week after successful surgery on a broken arm) have much good football in front of them.
It is all held together by a man who also has plenty of upside after taking charge of just his 100th game on the weekend. Justin Longmuir, who spent nine years learning the caper at West Coast and Collingwood is an astute tactician with an impassive terseness when discussing his team. On Saturday night, he accused his team of playing “one of their worst quarters of the year”.
“To win by 50 points, you don’t want to be Debbie Downer, but I just think we’ve got so much improvement left in us,” he said. “We had some good moments and some things that would be a little bit frustrating. I thought we played to probably a seven out of 10.”
It is a bluntness and call-it-as-it-is-ness that would be welcomed at the competition’s headquarters, but Longmuir’s players have clearly bought into his system and now hold the game’s second-longest winning streak at three – a giddy statistic in a non compos mentis year of football.
“I don’t think we’re sneaking under the radar in club land,” said Longmuir. “But externally, I don’t really get caught up in it.”
Although Hayden Young – who continues to impress in his evolution as a mid-forward – might be. Speaking to Fox Footy after the game, he said he didn’t mind flying under the radar. “We haven’t been to the pinnacle so a lot of people don’t put respect on our name,” he said.
But should Fremantle’s form hold up as the field narrows through the brawl of the last seven rounds (the final four of which they play against sides currently sitting in the eight), the Dockers may well emerge as a genuine premiership threat. Particularly now that the foundation of this wild season’s only bone-deep assumption – that the Swans will be there at the end – is starting to ever so slightly wobble.
