Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir says he won’t throw everything “upside down” just because his team’s finals hopes are officially over.
The Dockers’ slim chances of sneaking into the top eight were extinguished on Sunday when they suffered a three-point loss to Brisbane in at Optus Stadium.
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It means last year’s semi-finalists find themselves in 15th spot with an 8-12 record heading into Saturday night’s western derby against West Coast.
Fremantle finish their year with three games remaining against West Coast, Port Adelaide and Hawthorn.
The experiment of using defender Hayden Young in the midfield continues to bear fruit.
A week after successfully tagging Geelong star Patrick Dangerfield, Young helped curtail the influence of Brisbane midfield gun Lachie Neale early in Sunday’s match.
Young tallied 10 disposals in the first quarter while keeping Neale to just four possessions and no clearances.
Although Neale finished the match with 25 disposals and eight clearances, a lot of them came once the tag was relaxed somewhat.
Young finished the match with 29 disposals, 10 tackles and six clearances.
“I think he’s got that balance between locking away his man and working off him and getting the ball,” Longmuir said.
“I think he adds something different to our midfield mix in terms of his body size and left-footer. I think he’s shown enough that it’s worth persisting with.”
West Coast Eagles
Meanwhile, Essendon copped an almighty scare from West Coast, scraping in with a one-point win 10.13 (73) to 11.6 (72) at Marvel Stadium.
Down by 30 points early in the third quarter, the Eagles dominated the second half and hit the lead with 100 seconds left through a Ryan Maric goal.
But Kyle Langford, who kicked four goals in the second quarter, was able to sneak out the back and run in to slot his fifth major and put Essendon immediately back in front.
West Coast threatened again, winning the next centre clearance, but Bombers defender Brandon Zerk-Thatcher took a game-saving contested mark in the Eagles’ forward 50.
Essendon coach Brad Scott described it as a “harsh lesson”.
“Part of the challenge we’ve got to work through is that we are a very young and inexperienced team who have shown an ability to get up for games against a really high-quality of opposition,” Scott said.
“One of the third hallmarks of a young and inexperienced team is that potentially when they think things are just going to happen for them, they learn a harsh lesson.”
If the Eagles had won, they would have jumped off the bottom of the ladder and gone a game clear of North Melbourne, putting the Kangaroos in the box-seat to claim the No.1 draft pick.
But instead West Coast were left heartbroken, with players like Elliot Yeo slumping to the floor as the fulltime siren sounded.
“It’s a missed opportunity, absolutely no doubt about that,” Eagles coach Adam Simpson said.
“We hit the front with a minute 40 (seconds) to go; we haven’t been in that position a lot.
“We’ll learn from a coaching point of view as well, it was just good to be in the game two weeks in a row.
“Guys really fighting hard for the victory, but unfortunately we couldn’t ice it.”
with AAP
