Everyone at Fremantle is hurting after the club's winless start to the season, according to coach Ross Lyon.
However, Lyon saw some positive signs in the 31-point loss against North Melbourne and backed his team to continue improving.
"We're all hurting. It's our passion. It's what we do," he said.
"We want to fight on. I think we have some better footy in us."
Freo once again missed the jump against North Melbourne, conceding the first four goals of the game with centre-bounce work Lyon described as deplorable.
"[We had an] incredibly poor start. We got slaughtered out of the middle again, made some adjustments and then we were strong out of there," he said.
"Big-time footy is about starts out of the middle and we were poor in big time footy in the last quarter. We went 1-5 early out of there so that put us under pressure."
Such tardiness when the barriers open has left Freo with plenty of work to do as they chase a fifth consecutive finals berth under Lyon.
But Lyon seemed charged by the challenge and expected his team would be too.
"We're not going to melt under the lights of a press conference at 0-4. We've got greater character than that," he said.
The loss to North Melbourne completed a string of losses that includes the Western Bulldogs, Gold Coast and West Coast, four teams that fill the top six spots after round four.
Full match report: North storm home
A pragmatic Lyon could see signs of improvement.
"Clearly it's not where we want to be," he said.
"[We] gave pretty good effort tonight, not perfect but pretty good, so that gives us a really good foundation to try to improve our footy.
Lyon praised his leaders Nat Fyfe, Matthew Pavlich and Michael Johnson for digging in and refusing to yield to North Melbourne's early pressure.
He said it was a strong effort from those three because he feared, from his vantage point in the coach's box, that things were going to get ugly.
However Freo worked their way back into the contest, kicking 12 goals to eight through the middle of the game before the Kangaroos lifted the pace again and kicked seven unanswered goals to claim the points.
"You can't give teams a 26-point start and come from behind ... that zaps a lot out of you so when it's big-time at three-quarter time, they dug in," Lyon said.
"We spent a little bit to catch up and that was the end of it."
He said skipper David Mundy was unlikely to return from injury next week, although it remained a possibility, but Lyon said personnel wasn't what he was concerned about.
He said his only focus was helping the team to improve specific features of its game and also said he hoped to bleed in some new talent if players were fit and ready.
However, he was not going to get caught up in the discussion about whether Freo remained a finals contender.
"Everyone else can write about permutations and finals. That is not the world I live in," Lyon said.
