The Fremantle Dockers are close to putting together the brand of football they’ve been working on, according to defender Lee Spurr.
 
Spurr said while a more consistent effort was required throughout the game, he’d begun to see real signs of improvement in Freo’s ball use.
 
“I think our second and third quarters were real improvements and we played the brand of footy we really want to play,” Spurr said.
 
“We went after them, tackled hard, spread the ball and scored so that was a real positive.
 
“During that time we managed to get some uncontested marks around the 50 which we haven’t been getting, and used it efficiently which really made the Saints defend.”
 
It wasn’t just Freo’s attacking play that Spurr took positives from but also the performance of Freo’s younger players, including debutant Sam Collins.

Collins embraces AFL challenge
 
“Our young kids are really coming through and that brings a lot of excitement for us as players,” he said.
 
“The Saints have some handy forwards, obviously Nick Riewoldt is a superstar and they also have (Josh) Bruce, (Tim) Membrey and Paddy McCartin who’s a number one draft pick so he (Sam Collins) got a taste of AFL footy and held his own.
 
“He’ll look to improve and build his game, which is all you can ask of a young player.”
 
Freo will look to get their first win of the year against Essendon on Saturday and Spurr said they will have to rectify their slow start against St Kilda.
 
“We need to address the start,” he said.
 
“The first 20 minutes of the game put us under a lot of pressure so that’s the first thing (we need to do).
 
“We’ll also look to replicate our play from the second and third quarters for an entire game.
 
“We’ve had patches and quarters here and there over the first 10 rounds, but we need to put it together and we’ll do that by being driven, composed, hard at it and we’ll look to do that against Essendon.”